Stephen King: Trending quotes (page 2)

Stephen King

Truth , Lie

“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.

Art , Memory

“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)

Heartbreaking , Thinking , Heart

“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

Love , People , Lie , Secret

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

Stephen King book Rage

Source: Rage

Secret , Feeling

“Any game looks straight if everyone is being cheated at once.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

Source: The Long Walk

Game , Cheating

“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?”

Stephen King

Religion , Dreams , Thinking

“The darkness. Goddamn the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they were alive, they were screaming and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was darkness, and above all of it the nodding chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and the beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast…I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Way , Sun , Hope

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

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

God , Imagination

“Do you drink?"
"Of course, I just said I was a writer.”

Stephen King

Drink

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

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

People , Madness

“No good friends, no bad friends; only people you want, need to be with. People who build their houses in your heart.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It (1986), Ch. 16 : Eddie's Bad Break, §8
Context: Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

People , Heart , Housing

“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”

Stephen King book The Body

Source: The Body

World

“and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Love , Hate , World , Thinking

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft