Stephen King Quotes

671 Sourced Quotes

Kindle, isn't it? the waitress asked. I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I'm reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult's books. Oh, probably not all of them, Wesley said. Huh? Why not? She's probably got another one done already. That's all I meant. And James Patterson's probably written one since he got up this morning! she said, and went off chortling.

Stephen King
I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.

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
"He kill them with they love", John said. "They love for each other. You see how it was?" I nodded, incapable of speech.
He smiled. The tears were flowing again, but he smiled. "That's how it is every day", he said, "all over the world."

Stephen King
Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.

Stephen King
It's how we see the world that keeps the darkness beyond at bay. Keeps it from pouring through and devouring us. I think all of us might know that, way down deep.

Stephen King
Did you know that Dairy Queen ice cream is mostly bubbles?

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
People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You've heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What's so sweet about that?

Stephen King
The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep within the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.

Stephen King
There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.

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
It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.

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

Stephen King
He had a wife who was still sort of his responsibility, and when it came to his son there was no sort-of at all. Even thinking of Johnny was dangerous. Every time his mind turned to the boy, Clay felt a panic-rat inside his mind, ready to burst free of the flimsy cage that held it and start gnawing anything it could get at with its sharp little teeth. If he could make sure Johnny and Sharon were okay, he could keep the rat in its cage and plan what to do next. But if he did something stupid, he wouldn't be able to help anyone. In fact, he would make things worse for the people here.

Stephen King
Who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is the most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do.

Stephen King
He felt as if Stillson might have taken the game of the Laughing Tiger a step further: inside the beast-skin, a man, yes. But inside the man-skin, a beast.

Stephen King
Women are better at keeping secrets, but men are more comfortable with them.

Stephen King
It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?

Stephen King
Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.

Stephen King
Humans were built to look back; that's why we have that swivel joint in our necks

Stephen King
I don't think there was anything in my brain right then except the usual background static — the kind you get on your radio when it's turned up all the way and tuned to no station at all. My brain had checked to the power, so to speak; the little guy wearing the Napoleon hat inside was showing aces and betting them.

Stephen King
Sometimes, Delores, you have to be a high riding bitch in order to survive, because being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to..

Stephen King
What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the Earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.

Stephen King