Stephen King Quotes

And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.

That's not such a bad thing,' he said to me. 'In nightmares we can think the worst. That's what they're for, I guess.

Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end... and knowing there’s so much worth saving.

I don't like the idea that I am going to come back as an ant or a sparrow if I don't get along in the great karma of life.

When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.

You cannot condemn a man for what may only be a figment of your own imagination.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read

There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time.

The late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood.

On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew.

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.

To write is human, to edit is divine.

If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

They were close to the end of the beginning . . .

Love, the simplest, strongest, and most unforgiving of all emotions.

It's best to be ruthless with the past.

You can see the goldenrod, that most tenacious and pernicious and beauteous of all New England flora, bowing away from the wind like a great and silent congregation.

Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.

Dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust.

he looked to her like an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.

I've spread my legs in the backseat in a creative sense quite a few times.

...maybe the world needs a cadre of smartasses to liven things up, who knows?

I write about rats because they scare the hell out of me. I think we tend to write out our phobias.

There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.

Death is when the monsters get you.

A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.

Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.

Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.

Nobody likes a clown at midnight

Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.

Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy.

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.

Time's the thief of memory

Time heals all wounds.

and now, all these years later, it seem to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Doubters will doubt to the end.

Dreams age faster than dreamers.

No matter how many times you shake it the last drop always ends up in your pants

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

Successful rebellions always begin in secret.

Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That's what makes them children.

Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You... you fill me up.