Stephen King Quotes

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”

“The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high… but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.”

“Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

“Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.”

“I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.”

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.”

“Hearts can break. Yes. Hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.”

“I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids.”

“Gordie: Do you think I'm weird?
Chris: Definitely.
Gordie: No man, seriously. Am I weird?
Chris: Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird”

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

“Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.”

“And I wonder if there is really any point to what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing "let's pretend”

“But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. […] True sorrow is as rare as true love.”

“You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It’s accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.”

“Art consists of the persistence of memory.”

“People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.”

“Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.”

“Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.”

“God grant me to SERENITY to accept what I cannot change the TENACITY to change what I may and the GOOD LUCK not to f*** up too often”

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance… logic can be happily tossed out the window.”

“As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?”

“Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows underneath the armor”

“God always punishes us for what we can't imagine.”

“I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.”

“Love among the ruins… I'll tell you something, my friend: Weird love's better than no love at all.”

“It's only a little secret, but having a secret makes me feel better. Like a human being again.”

“Come on, big guy. Let's go for a ride. Let's cruise.”

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

“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.”

“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".”

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

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

“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.”

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”

“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.”

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”

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

“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

“When all else fails, give up and go to the library.”

“Nobody likes a clown at midnight”

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”

“there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.”

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

“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

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

“And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.”

“The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.”

“You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”

“It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”

“Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.”

“Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”

“Black serendipity. Maybe we know that under the right set of circumstances the things that live in the catacombs would be glad to crawl out.”

“I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain.”

“I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other.”

“I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't.”

“We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.”