Don’t go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this: there is more power here than you know. It is old and always restless. Remember.
Stephen KingI have no opinion. No, none at all. Opinion is politics, and politics is an evil which has caused many a fellow to be hung while he's still young and pretty.
Stephen KingThe ghost story movie that scared me the most was The Changeling with George C. Scott. I think that's sometimes overlooked, but it's a wonderful piece of work.
Stephen KingTalent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.
Stephen KingIt’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.
Stephen KingHow does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's?" If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one?" Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. "Touché. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story.
Stephen KingIf you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.
Stephen KingPanic is highly contagious, especially in situations when nothing is known and everything is in flux.
Stephen KingHapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.
Stephen KingThere came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.
Stephen KingHigh school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up.
Stephen KingFor a woman a man will do many things that he'd turn his back on in an instant when alone; things he'd back away from, nine times out of ten, even when drunk adn with a bunch of his friends egging him on.
Stephen KingThere were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.
Stephen KingI’ve always said to people, "I don’t care what you call me as long as the checks don’t bounce and the family gets fed." But I never saw myself that way. I just saw myself as a novelist.
Stephen KingIn the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives. . . .
Stephen KingListening to it was like having a mud-slimed piece of silk drawn lightly back and forth across her face.
Stephen KingI have grown into a Bestsellasaurus Rex - a big, stumbling book-beast that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses... I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force.
Stephen KingLanguage does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story... To make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.
Stephen KingI'm still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.
Stephen KingIt had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.
Stephen KingHe had never been a social man. He had shunned causes with contempt and disgust. They were for pig-simple suckers and people with too much time and money on their hands.
Stephen King...stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.
Stephen KingSpeaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.
Stephen KingDon't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.
Stephen KingI'm not the first person to have said this - no writer ever feels that the execution of a book lives up to the idea for that book. The execution always falls short.
Stephen KingShe ran out of her marriage the way a woman can run out of a pair of sandals when she decides to let go and really dash.
Stephen KingA cat won't curry favor even if it's in their best interests to do so. A cat can't be a hypocrite. If more preachers were like cats, this would be a more religious country.
Stephen KingLove isn't soft, like the poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.
Stephen KingThe idea that America exists in a culture of violence is bullshit. What America exists in is a culture of Kardashian.
Stephen King