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Stephen King Quotes
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Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television series, and comic books. King has published 54 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and six non-fiction books. He has written around 200 short stories, most of which have been collected in book collections.

His novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption was the basis for the film The Shawshank Redemption which is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.

Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

✵ 21. September 1947
Stephen King photo
Stephen King: 733   quotes 190   likes

Stephen King Quotes

“This is nine! Nine! This is nine! Nine! This is ten! Ten! We have killed your friends! Every friend is now dead! This is six! Six! … Eighteen! This is now eighteen! Take cover when the siren sounds! This is four! Four! … Five! This is five! Ignore the siren! Even if you leave this room, you can never leave this room! Eight! This is eight!”

Stephen King book Everything's Eventual

Disembodied voice of Room 1408, over the telephone
Pages 396–397[Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales, 1st edition, 2002, Scribner, New York, ISBN 0-7432-3515-0, 459 pages]
Everything's Eventual (2002), "1408"

Dead

“Once you get into cosmological shit like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual.”

Stephen King book It

The Voice of The Turtle
It (1986)

“Danny? You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. There’s some things no six-year-old boy in the world should have to be told, but the way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. The world’s a hard place, Danny. It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it’s only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don’t love you, but your momma does and so do I. You’re a good boy. You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it’s all out of you again. That’s what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.”

Stephen King book The Shining

The Shining (1977)

Pain , Hate , Bad luck , People

“I have grown into a Bestsellasaurus Rex — a big, stumbling book-beast that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses… I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force.”

Stephen King

The Politics of Limited Editions essay in Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 6 (June 1985), republished in various real world publications, including The Stephen King Story (1992) by George W. Beahm, p. 112

Money , Hate , Housing , Books

“You think 'Okay, I get it, I'm prepared for the worst', but you hold out that small hope, see, and that's what fucks you up. That's what kills you.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Joyland (2013)

Thinking , Hope

“Although it is difficult to believe, the sixties are not fictional; they actually happened.”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Author's Note
Hearts in Atlantis (1999)

“Tomorrowland, it seemed, ended up being an empty place where people smart enough to capture the stars got mad and tore each other to shreds with the claws on their feet.”

Stephen King The Tommyknockers

The Tommyknockers (1987)

Star , Madness , People

“Old Sparky seems such a thing of perversity when I look back on those days, such a deadly bit of folly. Fragile as blown glass, we are, even under the best of conditions. To kill each other with gas and electricity, and in cold blood? The folly. The horror.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

The Green Mile (1996)

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

Stephen King
Business

“A universe of worlds, a dimensional macrocosm of worlds—and in all of them one thing that was always the same; one unifying force that was undeniably good, even if it now happened to be imprisoned in an evil place; the Talisman, axle of all possible worlds.”

Stephen King book The Talisman

The Talisman (1984)

Universe , Evil , World

““We lie best when we lie to ourselves.””

Stephen King book IT
Lie