Stephen King Quotes

671 Sourced Quotes

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Stephen King
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
The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.

Stephen King
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
Kids, the fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

Stephen King
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Stephen King
My father had taught me - mostly by example - that if a man wanted to be in charge of his life, he had to be in charge of his problems.

Stephen King
Terror…often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking.

Stephen King
I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love; I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of these connections is horribly, outrageously high... and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid. (From introductory notes.)

Stephen King
It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.

Stephen King
They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

Stephen King
We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand.

Stephen King
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
Writing is like a little hole in reality that you can go through and you can get out and you can be someplace else for a while.

Stephen King
Like some dogs: kick them once and they never trust you again, no matter how nice you are to them.

Stephen King
The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst—for me, at least—is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.

Stephen King
I'm not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they're wearing… I can always get a J. Crew catalogue… …So spare me, if you please, the hero's 'sharply intelligent blue eyes' and 'outthrust determined chin'.

Stephen King
They are secret things. Women are supposed to be the ones good at keeping secrets, and I guess they do keep a few, but any woman who knows anything at all would tell you she's never really seen into any man's heart. The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis - like the soil up there in the old Micmac burying ground. Bedrock's close. A man grows what he can... and he tends it.

Stephen King
It's a depressingly masculine world we live in, Delores.

Stephen King
There was a beautiful feeling of calm in my groin, a sense of peace so remarkable it was almost ecstasy——anyone who' suffered bad pain and then recovered will know what I'm talking about.

Stephen King
He was one of those quite rare adults who communicate with small children fairly well and who love them all impartially—not in a sugary way but in a businesslike fashion that may sometimes entail a hug, in the same way that closing a big business deal may call for a handshake.

Stephen King
No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person

Stephen King
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
I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.

Stephen King
Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?

Stephen King