Selected Quotes by Stephen King
Stephen King- Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural, fantasy, crime, science-fiction, suspense, and fantasy novels.
Widely known as the "King of Horror", his books have sold more than 350 million copies as of 2006. Many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. He has published over 65 novels and novellas which includes seven under his pen name Richard Bachman, as well as five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, of which most have been published in book collections.
He has received many awards including the Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.
Selected Quotes by Stephen King:
“A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.”
Stephen King, Art
“When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.”
Stephen King, Art
“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art
“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
Stephen King, Art
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art
“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”
Stephen King, Art
“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.”
Stephen King, Art
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art
“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”
Stephen King, Art
“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew
Stephen King, Art
“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, Art
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
Stephen King, Art
“Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”
Stephen King, Art
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art
“The most important things are the hardest 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, Art
“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
Stephen King, Art
“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.”
Stephen King, Art
“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Stephen King, Art
“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art
“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Art, Happiness
“there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons
Stephen King, Hope
“Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
― Red in Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King , Different Seasons
Stephen King, Hope
“Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Stephen King, Hope
“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, Society
“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.”
― Stephen King , The Dark Tower
Stephen King, Happiness
“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”
― Stephen King, The Stand
Stephen King, Anger and Fighting
“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”
― Stephen King, Bag of Bones
Stephen King, Anger and Fighting
“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Goals
“FEAR stands for fuck everything and run.”
― Stephen King, Doctor Sleep
Stephen King, Goals
“There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.”
Stephen King, Goals
“I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.
I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.
I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Stephen King, Goals
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Goals
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons
Stephen King, Goals
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Stephen King, Goals
“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Stephen King, Goals, Courage
“Friends.
They aren’t any such thing as good friend or bad friend.
Maybe there are just friend.
People who stand by you when you're hurt and who helped you feel not so lonely.
Maybe there are worth being scared for and hoping for and living for.
Maybe worth dying for too.
If that what has to be.
No bad friends.
Only people you want.
Need to be with.
People who build their houses in your heart.” ― Stephen King, It
Stephen King, Friendship
“Nobody likes a clown at midnight.”
Stephen King, Life
“Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.”
― Stephen King, The Shining
Stephen King, Life
“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.”
― Stephen King, The Stand
Stephen King, Life
“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
Stephen King, Life
“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, Hearts in Atlantis
Stephen King, Life
“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”
Stephen King, 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.”
Stephen King, Life
“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
Stephen King, Life
“That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.”
― Stephen King, The Stand
Stephen King, Life, Belief
“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”
Stephen King, Truth
“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
Stephen King, Truth
“Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”
Stephen King, Truth, Friendship, Love
“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
Stephen King, Belief
“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
― Stephen King , The Stand
Stephen King, Belief, Society
“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”
― Stephen King, The Green Mile
Stephen King, Time
“Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there, too.”
― Stephen King, It
Stephen King, Love
“There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.”
Stephen King, Sex
“Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to.”
― Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne
Stephen King, Sex
“When all else fails, give up and go to the library.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63
Stephen King, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption