Stephen King Quotes

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

— Stephen King

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

He was a romantic in his own harsh way ... yet he was also realist enough to know that some times love actually did conquer all.

— Stephen King

“Politics always change. Stories never do.”

— Stephen King

“Sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.”

— Stephen King

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

— Stephen King

“Upon being asked by a fan how to become a writer, Stephen King replied, Write.”

— Stephen King

“How to Draw a Picture (XII)
Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life.”

— Stephen King

“Life's simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook.”

— Stephen King

Human Nature Baby, grab it and growl.

— Stephen King

“The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book is, because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.”

— Stephen King

“Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.”

— Stephen King

Like the man said, a little hope never hurt anybody

— Stephen King

“What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger! the man in black laughed.”

— Stephen King

“Him's name is Roland, Mama. I dream about him, sometimes. Him's a King, too.”

— Stephen King

“He thought that fat boys were probably only allowed to love pretty girls inside. If he told anyone how he felt (not that he had anyone to tell), that person would probably laugh until he had a heart-attack.”

— Stephen King

What he knows now is that guilt isn't the only reason people commit suicide. Sometimes you can just get bored with afternoon TV.

— Stephen King

“And that's when you realize what the Wagon really is, Lloyd. It's a church with bars on the windows, a church for women and a prison for you.”

— Stephen King

I don't want to hear the scary part. But at the same time she does want to hear the scary part, everyone wants to hear the scary part, we're all mad here, and her mother really did say that if you told your dreams they wouldn't come true, which meant you were supposed to tell the nightmares and save the good ones for yourself, hide them like a tooth under the pillow.

— Stephen King

“It was not just Danny the Overlook was working on. It was working on him, too. It wasn't Danny who was the weak link, it was him. He was the vulnerable one, the one who could be bent and twisted until something snapped.”

— Stephen King

People assume any twentieth-century white male writer must be an alcoholic.

— Stephen King

“Sure. Sure you have. I never forget a face.”

— Stephen King

As the twig is bent the bough is shaped, that was another old saying, and once a pretentious asshole, always a pretentious asshole.

— Stephen King

“You've got no right to hate the Major. He didn't force you."
"Force me? FORCE me? He's KILLING me, that's all!"
"It's still not-"
"Shut up," Baker said curtly, and Garraty shut. He rubbed the back of his neck briefly and stared up into the whitish-blue sky. His shadow was deformed huddle almost beneath his feet. He turned up his third canteen of the day and drained it.
Baker said, "I'm sorry. I surely didn't mean to shout. My feet-"
"Sure," Garraty said.
"We're all getting this way," Baker said. "I sometimes think that's the worst part.”

— Stephen King

“I scratched the word HELLO in small letters ... And as names go, it's a good one, isn't it? In spite of all the damage that followed, I still think that's the perfect name for a picture drawn by a man who was trying his best not to be sad anymore - who was trying to remember how it felt to be happy.”

— Stephen King

At three in the morning the gaudy paint is off that old whore, the world, and she has no nose and a glass eye. Gaiety becomes hollow and brittle, as in Poe's castle surrounded by the Red Death. Horror is destroyed by boredom. Love is a dream.

— Stephen King

Art should be a place of hope, not doubt. And your doubts rise from inexperience, which is not a dishonorable thing.

— Stephen King

“The sun loses its thin grip on the air first, turning it cold, making it remember that winter is coming and winter will be long. Thin clouds form, and the shadows lengthen out. They have no breadth, as summer shadows have; there are no leaves on the trees or fat clouds in the sky to make them thick. They are gaunt, mean shadows that bite the ground like teeth.”

— Stephen King

“But how you feel and how long you feel it doesn't always have a lot to do with objective truth.”

— Stephen King

“Even the most well-adjusted person is holding on to his or her sanity by a greased rope. The rationality circuits are shoddily built into the human animal.”

— Stephen King

“The stench in the air grew steadily stronger, and the dark about us seemed to press like wool, as if jealous of the light which had temporarily deposed it after so many years of undisputed dominion.”

— Stephen King

I thought you were good, but you are not good. You are just a lying old dirty birdie.

— Stephen King

When he remembered to turn and look for it, the Talisman was gone.

— Stephen King

I fell in love with you, he said. That's why I said it. It happened even before you kissed me, I think.

— Stephen King

“I guess Faulkner never would have written anything like this, huh? Oh, well.”

— Stephen King

That one smooth black eye stared, and reflected in it I fancied I could see the cyclopeon city, and the endless column of the marching dead.

— Stephen King

“Not everyone believes in ghost's, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?"
She had shaken her head slowly. "Men and women who can't get over the past," Aunt Evie said. "That's what ghost's are. Not them." She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. "The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay.”

— Stephen King

“He summoned all his willpower and reined it in, promising himself he would drink just as much as he goddam wanted once he had his forty in-a pretty amazing number, when fifty percent of city cops retired after twenty-five and seventy percent after thirty. Only now that he has his forty, alcohol no longer interests him much. He forced himself to get drunk a few times, just to see if he could still do it, and he could, but being drunk turned out to be no better than being sober. Actually it was a little worse.”

— Stephen King

“Fuck your warning. And fuck your mother. Either shoot me or get out of my house.”

— Stephen King

“He had scorned her, and didn't they say that hell hath no fury
? A scorned woman might well traffic with the devil ... or his henchman.”

— Stephen King

“Ka works and the world moves on. Slightman”

— Stephen King

“If I told what I knew about his relationship with Oswald, he might spend the rest of his career freezing his ass off in Fargo.”

— Stephen King

“They both swam in the Pacific a great deal. It was warmer than the Atlantic, and friendlier. It held no memories. The boy began to get very brown.”

— Stephen King

“When you're still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure. By”

— Stephen King

“You'll live in exile and die as you lived.”

— Stephen King

“They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn't much love in them. Because they were too busy being afraid. Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn't grow very well in a place where it was always dark.”

— Stephen King

“Hurt's a reason to change, but all the hurt in the world don't change facts.”

— Stephen King

“I think most of us are fascinated by the macabre and by the weird and even the nastiness that comes along.”

— Stephen King

“Be true, be brave, stand All the rest is darkness.”

— Stephen King

“You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that. And what I keep coming back to is [her] dying declaration: 'So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.'”

— Stephen King