Stephen King Quotes

671 Sourced Quotes

Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye.

Stephen King
If I can get it down on paper without puking all over the word processor, then as far as I'm concerned, it's fit to see the light of day.

Stephen King
Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

Stephen King
My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores. You could get your Acapulco gold or your whatever it happened to be - your Augusta gold or your Bangor gold. And people would come from all the other states to buy it, and there could be a state tax on it. Then everybody in Maine could have a Cadillac.

Stephen King
When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.

Stephen King
There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all.

Stephen King
I work to loud music - hard-rock stuff like AC/DC, Guns 'n Roses, and Metallica have always been particular favorites - but for me the music is just another way of shutting the door.

Stephen King
The King is in his Tower, eating bread and honey. The Breakers in the basement, making all the money.

Stephen King
Book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel: book-buyers want a good story...something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages.

Stephen King
Little by little, writers develop their own styles, each as unique as a fingerprint.

Stephen King
Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad' is fearful behavior.

Stephen King
He supposed that even in Hell, people got an occasional sip of water, if only so they could appreciate the full horror of unrequited thirst when it set in again.

Stephen King
Remember that the truth is in the details. No matter how you see the world or what style it imposes on your work as an artist, the truth is in the details. Of course the devil's there, too-everyone says so-but maybe truth and the devil are words for the same thing. It could be you know.

Stephen King
My basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves.

Stephen King
We live in a society now where the sexual taboo for children has really passed by the wayside. Any nineyear-old can go into a 7-11 and check out the Playmate of the Month, but you don't want your kids to know about death. You don't want your kids to know about disfigurement. You don't want 'em to know about creepy things because it might warp their little minds.

Stephen King
I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren't weak. Isn't that what Nixon kept saying? "We have to show the world that we're not weak." So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. 'Cause we couldn't beat these kids in black pajamas.

Stephen King
Everyone needs a hobby, he said. And everyone needs a miracle or two, just to prove life is more than just one long trudge from the cradle to the grave.

Stephen King
Whenever I publish a book, I feel like a trapper caught by the Iroquois. They're all lined up with Tomahawks, and the idea is to run through with your head down, and everybody gets to take a swing. They hit you in the head, the back, the ass, and the balls.

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

Stephen King
Waiting rooms were made for books-of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone's favorite, the john.

Stephen King
For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.

Stephen King
A lot of authority figures want to be good. I sense that, and yet at the same time I sense that authority, after a while, always leads to some kind of oppression. When the minority report comes in, what you do is run the minority out of town with a flaming cross. It's just the way things are.

Stephen King
Belief has a second edge. If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one - probably a child - who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.

Stephen King
Just the act of cooking made her feel better, because cooking was life.

Stephen King
Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story.

Stephen King
We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives.

Stephen King
Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power; great fantasy fiction is about people who find it at great cost or lose it tragically; mediocre fantasy fiction is about people who have it and never lose it but simply wield it.

Stephen King
There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good stories seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky.

Stephen King
The writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's.

Stephen King
I drink a lot of beer, and that's the drug of choice. You find the drug that works for you. I know, for instance, this guy named Harlan Ellison - and he's not alone - who's very proud of the fact that he doesn't put dope into his body. He tries not to put additives into his body, or anything like that. But he can afford to do that because Harlan's drug of choice is Harlan.

Stephen King