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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 191   likes

Stephen King Quotes

“All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Stephen King in introduction.
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)

Death , Secret

“She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Love , Time

“They were close to the end of the beginning…”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“Want a balloon?”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.”

Stephen King

“I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.”

Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon

Source: The Eyes of the Dragon

Friendship , World , Feeling , Flowers

“I don't have to listen to rumors about a man when I can judge him for myself.”

Stephen King

Source: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons

“We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other… except through faith.”

Stephen King book Danse Macabre

Source: Danse Macabre

Faith

“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

Source: The Shining (1977)
Context: 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.

Love , World

“Time and tide wait for no man.”

Stephen King
Time , Waiting

“because the hardest boss a man can ever have is himself.”

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

“I am, he thought dimly, watching a vampire take a piss.”

Stephen King

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair… Come to it any way but lightly.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Hope , Way , Despair

“The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.”

Stephen King book Rose Madder

Source: Rose Madder

World , Dreams , Sleep

“You can't be careful on a skateboard.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the good byes that tell us we're still alive.”

Stephen King

Source: Wolves of the Calla

“Explanations are such cheap poetry.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Books , Cars , Business , Time

“Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me!”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“I started after him… and the clown looked back. I saw Its eyes, and all at once I understood who It was."
"Who was it, Don?" Harold Gardner asked softly.
"It was Derry," Don Hagarty said. "It was this town.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“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

Fools , Time

“Love leaves scars.”

Stephen King book Joyland

Joyland

Love

“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.”

Stephen King book The Dead Zone

Source: The Dead Zone 1979

“The thought process can never be complete without articulation.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

“She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)

Life , Pain , Dreams , Time

“Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford, Jack?”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining

“I changed it. I had to. Do you know why?" She studied him, her eyes grave. "Because that was then and this is now. Because the past is gone, even though it defines the present.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

Study , Change , Past

“Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Failure , Optimism

“He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)

Truth , Literature

“Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it.”

Stephen King

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

“In the Land of Memory the time is always.
In the Kingdom of Ago, the clocks tick… but their hands never move.
There is an Unfound Door
(O lost)
and memory is the key which opens it.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

Memory , Time

“On the subject of love at first sight, I’m with the Beatles: I believe that it happens all the time.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Love , Time

“No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Variant: No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.
Source: Different Seasons

Business

“Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -”

Stephen King

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Life , Reading

“That’s how you know you’re home, I think, no matter how far you’ve gone from it or how long you’ve been in some other place. Home is where they want you to stay longer.”

Stephen King book Revival

Source: Revival

Home , Thinking

“God turned out to be a bunch of bad little kids playing interstellar Xbox. Isn't that funny?”

Stephen King book Under the Dome

Source: Under the Dome

God

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Love

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?”

Stephen King book The Body

Variant: I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?
Source: The Body

“I hated school. I don't trust anybody who looks back on the years from 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

Stephen King

Variant: I hated high school. I don’t trust anybody who looks back on the years from 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there’s something wrong with you.

Hate , School

“Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.”

Stephen King book Cell

Source: Cell

Way , Intelligence

“It was not fair, it was not fair, it was not fair. So cried his child's heart, and then his child's heart died a little. For that is also the way of the world.”

Stephen King

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

World , Way , Heart

“Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Variant: Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
Source: The Gunslinger

Lie , Lovers

“Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end… and knowing there’s so much worth saving.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

Way

“A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Personality

“The sandwich he made was bologna and cheese, his favorite. All the sandwiches he made were his favorites; that was one of the advantages of being single.”

Stephen King book 'Salem's Lot

Source: 'Salem's Lot