Stephen King famous quotes

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.
-- Stephen King

#Color #Dancer #Mouths

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.
-- Stephen King

#Thinking #Mind #Way

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

#Wings #Rose #Shadow

God and the afterlife and all that is certainly a subject that's interested me, and I think it interests me more the older that I get.
-- Stephen King

#Thinking #Afterlife #Interest

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it's too late.
-- Stephen King

#Too Late #Why Not #Influence

I think we'd all like to believe that after we shuffle off this mortal coil, that there's going to be something on the other side because for most of us, I know for me, life is so rich, so colorful and sensual and full of good things, things to read, things to eat, things to watch, places to go, new experiences, that I don't want to think that you just go to darkness.
-- Stephen King

#Believe #Thinking #Darkness

Time apparently did nothing but blunt grief’s sharpest edge so that it hacked rather than sliced.
-- Stephen King

#Grief #Blunt

As a kid, death seemed boring to me. As an adult, I think that it seems more like a waste of everything. Somebody once said every time a professor dies, a library burns.
-- Stephen King

#Kids #Thinking #Library

Nobody lives forever, but we all shine on.
-- Stephen King

#Shining #Forever

Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. But at the same time there's a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, well, if this is God's plan, it's very peculiar. And you have to wonder about that guy's personality, the big guy's personality.
-- Stephen King

#Intelligent #Design #Personality

The dream might have been more than a dream. It was as if a door in the wall of reality had come ajar... and now all sorts of unwelcome things were flying through.
-- Stephen King

#Dream #Wall #Reality

Belief in the supernatural or belief in wild talents like precognition and telepathy and telekinesis and things like that, it seems to me that belief in those things is just very, very freeing.
-- Stephen King

#Belief #Talent #Telepathy

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

#Heart #Years #Broken

My childhood was pretty ordinary, except from a very early age, I wanted to be scared. I just did. I was scared afterwards. I wanted a light on, because I was scared that there was something in the closet. My imagination was very active, even at a young age.
-- Stephen King

#Light #Imagination #Childhood

Give a man or woman back his self-respect, and in most cases-not all, but most-you also give back that person's ability to think with at least some clarity.
-- Stephen King

#Men #Thinking #Self

As we get older, our fears, in some way, sharpen and become more personal, because we can no longer - let's say take a book like "It" or maybe "Christine," and say these are make-believe fears.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Believe #Way

We don't know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well.
-- Stephen King

#Wells

When you ask me what I'm afraid of, I'd say I still go to see ghost movies when I get a chance or some sort of supernatural being, but it doesn't scare me as it scared me when I was a child.
-- Stephen King

#Children #Scare #Chance

I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.
-- Stephen King

#Beautiful #Appreciation #Saws

It's been quite a while since I was really afraid that there was a boogeyman in my closet, although I am still very careful to keep my feet under the covers when I go to sleep, because the covers are magic, and if your feet are covered, it's like boogeyman Kryptonite.
-- Stephen King

#Sleep #Kryptonite #Feet

Dreams age faster than dreamers.
-- Stephen King

#Dream #Dreamer #Age

I'm most afraid of losing my mind. You lose your identity, your sense of who you are, where you are.
-- Stephen King

#Mind #Identity #Losing

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?
-- Stephen King

#Friendship #Jesus

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.
-- Stephen King

#Men #People #Age

Successful rebellions always begin in secret.
-- Stephen King

#Successful #Secret #Rebellion

That was what I wanted, but I don't need it to be gone. I can love you and I can love life and bear the pain all at the same time. I think the pain might even make the rest better, the way a good setting can make a diamond look better.
-- Stephen King

#Pain #Love You #Love Life

I think of fear as a survival function, and in the stories that I write, the only thing that I've tried to do is provide people with nightmares which are really safe places to put those fears for a while because you can say afterwards that uh, that, that well it was all just make-believe anyway, so I just took my emotions for a walk.
-- Stephen King

#Believe #Writing #Thinking

Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye.
-- Stephen King

#Eye #Heart #May

My books depend on someone in danger, putting pieces together and figuring things out. They do a lot of thinking, and that gets lost in the movie.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Thinking #Together

Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.
-- Stephen King

#Fall #Evil #Waiting

I identify with the characters very closely. At the same time that I`m outside, writing, I`m also inside, experiencing, and it can be very unsettling.
-- Stephen King

#Writing #Character

Good books are for consideration after, too.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Good Book #Consideration

I hardly ever read mainstream fiction that deals with life as it is. I like an element of fantasy, something that isn`t quite of the real world.
-- Stephen King

#Real #Fiction #Elements

where the world ends is where you must begin
-- Stephen King

#World #Ends

The books are always there, just the way you wrote them. The plays often don`t turn out the way you wanted them to because in the theater, you`re always involved with collaborators and they don`t always see the work the way you do.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Play #Way

It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?
-- Stephen King

#Past #Want #Sometimes

I enjoy going back and forth between plays and novels. It`s like having a wife and a mistress. Books are the wife; plays, the mistress.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Play #Wife

Outside, a gusty October breeze was combing leaves from the trees and sending them across her backyard in colorful skitters.
-- Stephen King

#Tree #October #Backyards

I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts.
-- Stephen King

#Believe #Doubt #Serious

What can be done when you’re eleven can often never be done again.
-- Stephen King

#Done #Eleven

I always felt that organized religion was just basically a theological insurance scam where they're saying if you spend time with us, guess what, you're going to live forever, you're going to go to some other plain where you're going to be so happy, you'll just be happy all the time, which is also kind of a scary idea to me.
-- Stephen King

#Ideas #Scary #Forever

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.
-- Stephen King

#Men #Long #Wheels

The age of the book is not over. No way... But maybe the age of some books is over. People say to me sometimes 'Steve, are you ever going to write a straight novel, a serious novel' and by that they mean a novel about college professors who are having impotence problems or something like that. And I have to say those things just don't interest me. Why? I don't know. But it took me about twenty years to get over that question, and not be kind of ashamed about what I do, of the books I write.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Writing #Mean

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.
-- Stephen King

#Lying #Kids #Writing

When I gave up dope and alcohol, my immediate feeling was 'I've saved my life, but there'll be a price because I'll have nothing that buzzes me any more'. But I enjoyed my kids. My wife loved me and I loved her. And eventually the writing came back and I discovered that the writing was enough. Stupid thing is that probably it always had been.
-- Stephen King

#Stupid #Kids #Writing

I think that friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.
-- Stephen King

#Gratitude #Sweet #Flower

The kids accepted my drinking as a part of life. Not a particularly pernicious part. I didn't beat up on them. Basically I don't think I was so different from a lot of dads who have three or four martinis when they get in from work, wine with dinner and so on.
-- Stephen King

#Dad #Drinking #Wine

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.
-- Stephen King

#Cutting #Knives #Discipline

I didn't go to bars much. One drunken ***** was all I could handle and that was me. I wrote. I don't remember a lot of it.
-- Stephen King

#Bars #Remember #Handle

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

#Strength #Bullying

I think reality is thin, you know, thin as lake ice after a thaw, and we fill our lives with noise and light and motion to hide that thinness from ourselves.
-- Stephen King

#Reality #Thinking #Light

My wife has told me since that I was hungover every mornng until about two in the afternoon, and from five until midnight I was drunk out of my mind. So she says there was this period of about three hours when she could talk to me like a rational human being...
-- Stephen King

#Two #Drunk #Wife

Talent is never static. It's always growing or dying.
-- Stephen King

#Dying #Growing #Talent

Did it [cocaine] for about eight years. Not a terribly long time to be an addict I guess, but it is longer than World War II.
-- Stephen King

#War #Years #Eight

Faith is a great thing, and really religious people would like us to believe that faith and knowing are the same thing, but I don't believe that myself. Because there are too many different ideas on the subject. What we know is this: When we die, one of two things happens. Either our souls and thoughts somehow survive the experience of dying or they don't. If they do, that opens up every possibility you could think of. If they don't, it's just blotto. The end.
-- Stephen King

#Religious #Believe #Thinking

It was always a pleasure to write. I can never think of a time when I just hacked something out to fulfil a contract or meet a deadline. I might have hacked things out, but it was always stuff I loved.
-- Stephen King

#Writing #Thinking #Might

If you don't control your temper, your temper will control you.
-- Stephen King

#Temper

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.
-- Stephen King

#Writing #Maps #Pages

I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
-- Stephen King

#Dream #Journey #Men

If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.
-- Stephen King

#Loneliness #Crazy #Togetherness

Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.
-- Stephen King

#Journey #Done #May

Rewrite formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.
-- Stephen King

#Writing #Formulas

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.
-- Stephen King

#Love #Heart #Thinking

It was the kiss by which all the others of his life would be judged and found wanting.
-- Stephen King

#Kissing #Would Be #Found

Relief loosens tongues beyond measure.
-- Stephen King

#Relief #Tongue

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it?
-- Stephen King

#Dream #Sweet #Brevity

It was life, often unsatisfying, frequently cruel, usually boring, sometimes beautiful, once in a while exhilarating.
-- Stephen King

#Beautiful #Sometimes #Boring

But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don’t think it’s in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart.
-- Stephen King

#Life #Stars #Love You

On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time.
-- Stephen King

#Believe #Sight #Firsts

If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. - Japanese Proverb
-- Stephen King

#Dimples #Scar #Smallpox

Death was no less a miracle than birth.
-- Stephen King

#Miracle #Birth

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
-- Stephen King

#Hate #Real #Winning

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.
-- Stephen King

#Mad #People #Trying

Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.
-- Stephen King

#Halloween #Keys #Awful

Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.
-- Stephen King

#Girl #Sorry #Coffee

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.
-- Stephen King

#Monsters #Sometimes #Humans

Things were going very fast now. Too fast to suit him. Fantasy and reality had merged.
-- Stephen King

#Reality #Fantasy And Reality #Suits

Some things were better lost than found.
-- Stephen King

#Lost #Found

The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep within the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.
-- Stephen King

#Struggle #Hands #Soul

Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.
-- Stephen King

#Falling In Love #Fear #Home

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer.
-- Stephen King

#Wise #Dream #Children

Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford, Jack?
-- Stephen King

#Luxury #Self #Self Pity

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.
-- Stephen King

#Regret #Feelings #Guilt

You could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than from your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go… well, anywhere at all.
-- Stephen King

#Path #Steps #Fantastic

Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?
-- Stephen King

#Dad #Chicks

She knew with suddeness and ease that this moment would be with her always, within hand's reach of memory. She doubted if they all sensed it - they had seen the world - but even George was silent for a minute as they looked, and the scene, the smell, even the sound of the band playing a faintly recognisable movie theme, was locked forever in her, and she was at peace.
-- Stephen King

#Memories #Hands #Smell

The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.
-- Stephen King

#Kings #House #Secret

Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
-- Stephen King

#Motivational #Success #Teenage

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.
-- Stephen King

#Book #Perfect #Dollars

I think it's relatively easy for people to accept something like telepathy or precognition or teleplasm because their willingness to believe doesn't cost them anything. It doesn't keep them awake nights. But the idea that the evil that men do lives after them is unsettling.
-- Stephen King

#Believe #Night #Men

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.
-- Stephen King

#Writing #Thinking #Way

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.
-- Stephen King

#Heartache #Wanting More #Recipes

He began to cry, not hysterically or screaming as people cry when concealed rage with tears, but with continuous sobs who has just discovered that he's alone and will be for long. He cried because safety and reason seemed to have left the world. Loneliness was a reality, but in this situation madness was also remotely a possibility.
-- Stephen King

#Loneliness #Reality #Safety

So where do the ideas-the salable ideas-come from? They come from my nightmares. Not the night-time variety, as a rule, but the ones that hide just beyond the doorway that separates the conscious from the unconscious.
-- Stephen King

#Night #Ideas #Scary

A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.
-- Stephen King

#Dream #Stupid #Blow

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.
-- Stephen King

#Real #Halloween #Feet

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'
-- Stephen King

#Family #Jobs #Humor

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
-- Stephen King

#Kings #Writing #Doors

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.
-- Stephen King

#Lying

God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you.
-- Stephen King

#Noses