Stephen King Quotes

You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love;I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of these connections is horribly, outrageously high... and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid. (From introductory notes.)

Time continued to pass - the oldest trick in the world, and maybe the only one that really is magic.

He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.

Madness is a kind of mental suicide.

And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... and what your dreams are like.

When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.

Sometimes loving eyes don't see what they don't want to see.

If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.

I like to write short stories more because I never met a writer who wasn't lazy. And a short story is, by its very definition, short. It is something that generally you can turn out in a week to two weeks depending on how well it goes for you. But, at the same time, it gives the same satisfaction of creating a complete world.

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.

A place is yours when you know where all the roads go.

Passing time adds false memories and modifies real ones.

And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back?

Somebody said the prospect of eminent death has a wonderful clarifying effect on the mind. And I don't know if that's true, but I do think it probably causes some changes, some evolution in the way a person works. But on a day-by-day basis, I just still enjoy doing what I'm doing.

True love always happens in a flash.

Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing.

Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped.

If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you.

You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?

It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.

I think most of us can remember from our own childhood, just in the Disney cartoons, things that frightened us profoundly. For me it was Bambi, the scene when the forest was on fire. That was something I had nightmares about. I can't imagine being a little kid of eight and seeing Night Of The Living Dead with living corpses eating the flesh of living people.

Murder is like potato chips: you can't stop with just one.

She didn't see him at first. She was watching the dancers. Her color was high, and there were deep dimples at the corners of her mouth. She looked nine miles out of place, but he had never loved her more. This was Willa on the edge of a smile.

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

I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.

Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.

I don't really map anything out. I just let it happen [while writing]. But once it happens, it's always there. If it's laid, it's played. If I get to page 300 and it's not working, I junk it.

I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.

It was as hysterical as a woman having a hot flash.

Every marriage has two hearts, one light and one dark

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Sometimes [...] real love is silent as well as blind.

It's a hard life if you don't weaken.

The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.

Her body was wrapped in shadows like moth wings, like rose-petals.

Of all the questions I'm asked, the most difficult is, "How does it feel to be famous?" Since I'm not, that question always catches me with a feeling of surrealism....I've got three kids and I've changed all their diapers, and when it's two o'clock in the morning and you're changing something that's sort of special delivery with one eye open and one eye shut you don't feel famous.

What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did? There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, but because you think I should be. I look back on the way I was. A young, stupid kid that committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left.

Rightly tired of the pain İ hear and feel, boss... where we's comin from or goin to or why... If İ could end it, İ would. But İ can't.

There’s always someone who knows something.

The thought process can never be complete without articulation.

I don't really get philosophical, but I believe that nice people are strong and usually in my horror stories, I don't like to write about the old standard where some rotten guy gets chased by a mean spirit that gets him in the end.I'd rather write about nice people that are menaced from outside by some sort of evil power and who sort of slug it out.

...stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel sh*t from a sitting position.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride--if responsibility robs him of his manhood.

Mrs. Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.