Stephen King Quotes

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

Variant: The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King book Skeleton Crew

Source: Skeleton Crew

“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It (1986)

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King Quotes about time

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

Variant: Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“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.”

Source: The Green Mile

“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.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

“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.”

Variant: Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.
Source: The Green Mile

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

Stephen King Quotes about thinking

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

“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.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“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.”

Stephen King book The Body

Different Seasons (1982), The Body

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

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis (1999)

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

Stephen King book Christine

Source: Christine

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

Stephen King book The Body

Source: The Body

Stephen King: Trending quotes

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

“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.”

Stephen King The Tommyknockers

Source: The Tommyknockers

Stephen King Quotes

“The tears were flowing again, but he smiled. "That's how it is every day", he said, "all over the world."”

“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”

The Green Mile (1996)
Context: "He kill them with they love", John said. "They love for each other. You see how it was?" I nodded, incapable of speech.
He smiled. The tears were flowing again, but he smiled. "That's how it is every day", he said, "all over the world."

Stephen King book The Body

Source: The Body

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

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

“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.”

Stephen King book The Shining

The Shining (1977)

“Art consists of the persistence of memory.”

Stephen King book Misery

Misery (1987)
Context: Writers remember everything... especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.
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.”

Source: The Stand

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

“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”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot

“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?”

Source: The Stand

“Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows underneath the armor”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

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

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

“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.”

Source: The Green Mile

Stephen King book Rage

Source: Rage

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

Stephen King book Christine

Christine

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

Stephen King book On Writing

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Variant: 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".”

Stephen King Storm of the Century

Storm of the Century (1999)
Source: Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

“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.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“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 book 'Salem's Lot

Variant: 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…
Source: 'Salem's Lot

“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.”

Stephen King book Night Shift

Source: Night Shift

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

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

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

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

“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.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“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.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

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

Source: The Stand

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

“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.”

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

“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.”

Source: The Stand

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

“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.”

Source: Wolves of the Calla

“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.”

Stephen King book Apt Pupil

Different Seasons (1982), Apt Pupil
Context: But maybe there is something about what the Germans did that exercises a deadly fascination over us - something that opens the catacombs of the imagination. Maybe part of our dread and horror comes from a secret knowledge that under the right - or wrong - set of circumstances, we ourselves would be willing to build such places and staff them. 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.”

The Green Mile (1996)
Context: 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. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin' to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I cain't.

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