Stephen King Quotes

She was smart and terribly determined, this girl-her will was pure steel, through and through-but she was as human as anyone else. She was lonely, too. Lonely in a way that perhaps only single girls fresh from small Midwestern towns know. Homesickness is not always a vague, nostalgic, almost beautiful emotion, although that is somehow the way we always seem to picture it in our mind. It can be a terribly keen blade, not just a sickness in metaphor but in fact as well. It can change the way one looks at the world; the faces one sees in the street look not just indifferent but ugly....perhaps even malignant. Homesickness is a real sickness- the ache of the uprooted plant.

~ Stephen King

Disappointment was never a thing you looked for, but it had a wonderful way of clearing the mind.

~ Stephen King

I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one's own pleasure, that fear may be mild — timidity is the word I've used here. If, however, one is working under deadline — a school paper, a newspaper article, the SAT writing sample — that fear may be intense.

~ Stephen King

Here is one of the great truths of the human condition: when you need Stayfree Maxi Pads to absorb the expectorants produced by your insulted body, you are in serious fucking trouble.

~ Stephen King

Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?

~ Stephen King

It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, Here you are. Try not to lose it. But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to.

~ Stephen King

I guess a sock is also a geometric shape—technically—but I don't know what you'd call it. A socktagon?

~ Stephen King

The feel of the sticky wetness down there when she moved made her grimace. God, she wanted to get cleaned up. In a hurry.

~ Stephen King

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

~ Stephen King

We could argue about what constitutes the creepiest line in pop music, but for me it's early Beatles- John Lennon, actually- singing 'I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.

~ Stephen King

I'm going out for a bottle of champagne. We're going to get bombed.

~ Stephen King

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

When Annie's treatin, you best be eatin.

~ Stephen King

It was never for you, Annie, or all the other people out there who sign their letters “Your number-one fan.” The minute you start to write all those people are at the other end of the galaxy, or something. It was never for my ex-wives, or my mother, or for my father. The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.

~ Stephen King

Misery suffered did not justify misery to come.

~ Stephen King

We see her go through dangerous mood-swings, but I tried never to come right out and say Annie was depressed and possibly suicidal that day or Annie seemed particularly happy that day.If I have to tell you, I lose. If, on the other hand, I can show you a silent, dirty-haired woman who compulsively gobbles cake and candy, then have you draw the conclusion that Annie is in the depressive part of a manic-depressive cycle, I win.

~ Stephen King

She gave him a strange maternal grin.For the first time, clearly, the thought surfaced in Paul Sheldon’s mind: I am introuble here. This woman is not right.

~ 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

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.

~ Stephen King

Tony, Tony,come around, something's lost that can't be found.

~ Stephen King

Not today. Instead of Wendy, I found myself thinking of Annie Ross and realizing I’d developed a small but powerful crush on her. The fact that nothing could come of it—she had to be ten years older than me, maybe twelve—only seemed to make things worse. Or maybe I mean better, because unrequited love does have its attractions for young men.

~ Stephen King

Yeah, but what if you went back and killed your own grandfather?He stared at me, baffled. Why the fuck would you do that?

~ Stephen King

Party lights hang over the street, yellow and red and green. Sadie stumbles over someone’s chair, but I’m ready for this and I catch her easily by the arm.“Sorry, clumsy,” she says.“You always were, Sadie. One of your more endearing traits.”Before she can ask about that I slip my arm around her waist. She slips hers around mine, still looking up at me. The lights skate across her cheeks and shine in her eyes. We clasp hands, fingers folding together naturally, and for me the years fall away like a coat that’s too heavy and too tight. In that moment, I hope on thing above all others: that she was not too busy to find at least one good man …She speaks in a voice almost too low to be heard over the music. But I hear her – I always did. “Who are you, George?”“Someone you knew in another life, honey.

~ Stephen King

The past is obdurate.

~ Stephen King

History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music.

~ Stephen King

A man who lies about beer makes enemies

~ Stephen King

College was for people who didn’t know they were smart.

~ Stephen King

Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.

~ Stephen King

Faith is, by its very definition, belief without proof.

~ Stephen King

And this wasn’t lying, not really. It was leaving out.

~ Stephen King

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

~ Stephen King

In the years since, I've discovered there's a lot to be said for boredom.

~ Stephen King

Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature.

~ Stephen King

[Prison Break is] one of the craziest, most unpredictable roller-coaster rides on TV today.

~ Stephen King

The inmates made jokes about the chair, the way people always make jokes about things that frighten them but can't be gotten away from.

~ Stephen King

The wide corridor up the centre of E Block was floored with linoleum the colour of tired old limes, and so what was the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain.

~ Stephen King

A left turn meant life - if you called what went on in the sunbaked exercise yard life, and many did; many lived it for years, with no apparent ill effects.

~ Stephen King

When you spend your life taking care of mudmen, you can't help getting a little dirty yourself.

~ Stephen King

I hated high school. I don’t trust anybody who looks back on the years from 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there’s something wrong with you.

~ Stephen King

It was bad, but what in high school is not? At the time we're stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems like the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It's not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was.

~ Stephen King