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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 quotes191 likes

Stephen King Quotes

“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

Stephen King

“God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.”

Stephen King

“High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Source: The Green Mile

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity”

Stephen King book Hearts in Atlantis

Source: Hearts in Atlantis

“Time's the thief of memory”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.”

Stephen King

Source: Wolves of the Calla

“I tend to scare myself.”

Stephen King

“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

“Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.”

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

“Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.”

Stephen King book Desperation

Source: Desperation

“Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

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

Stephen King

“Am I weird?"

"Yeah. But so what? Everybody's weird.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

“the only mortal sin is giving up.”

Stephen King

“If I kept saying it; if I kept reaching out. My accident really taught me just one thing: the only way to go on is to go on. To say 'I can do this' even when you know you can't.”

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

“I write to find out what I think.”

Stephen King

“A coward judges all he sees by what he is.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

“Sometimes dead is better”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

“A person can't change all at once.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

“I've said it before, and I'll say it again. When you find something at which you have talent, you do that thing (what ever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes pop out of your head.”

Stephen King

“Do it for joy and you can do it forever”

Stephen King

“Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”

Stephen King book It

Variant: And almost idly, in a kind of sidethought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Source: It (1986)

“… stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“Reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren't prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I'm a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don't read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common….”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three

Source: The Drawing of the Three

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must… they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that.”

Stephen King

“I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“Don't ask me silly questions
I won't play silly games
I'm just a simple choo choo train
And I'll always be the same.

I only want to race along
Beneath the bright blue sky
And be a happy choo choo train
Until the day I die.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

Source: The Waste Lands

“It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Source: Joyland

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The most important things are the hardest to say”

Stephen King

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”

Stephen King

“I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.”

Stephen King book Full Dark, No Stars

Source: Full Dark, No Stars

“And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary (1983)
Context: It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself.

“Was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger