Best Stephen King Quotes
Stephen King Quotes on Writing
- “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
- “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
- “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ― Stephen King.
- “A short story is a different thing altogether—a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”—Skeleton Crew
- “A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.” ― Stephen King.
- “When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’” ― Stephen King.
- “Description begins in the writer’s imagination but should finish in the readers.” ― Stephen King.
- “It is the tale, not he who tells it.”—Different Seasons: Four Novellas, ― Stephen King.
- “I write to find out what I think.” ― Stephen King, The Colorado Kid.
- “When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.” ― Stephen King.
- “You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.” ― Stephen King.
- “You must not come lightly to the blank page.” ― Stephen King
Stephen King Quotes on Love
- Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. ― Stephen King.
- If you have given up your heart … you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. ― Stephen King.
- True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring — once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome… except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners. And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous. ― Stephen King.
- True love always happens in a flash. ― Stephen King.
- Even when love isn’t enough…somehow it is. ― Stephen King.
- One night when my longing for her was like a fire burning out of control in my heart and my head, I wrote her a letter that just seemed to go on and on. I poured out my whole heart in it, never looking back to see what I’d said because I was afraid cowardice would make me stop. I didn’t stop, and when a voice in my head clamored that it would be madness to mail such a letter, that I would be giving her my naked heart to hold in her hand, I ignored it with a child’s breathless disregard of the consequences. ― Stephen King.
- Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You… you fill me up. ― Stephen King.
- If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I’ll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it’s yours. ― Stephen King.
- A life without love is like a tree without fruit. ― Stephen King.
- French is the language that turns dirt into romance. ― Stephen King.
Stephen King Quotes on Life
- “And in real life endings aren’t always neat, whether they’re happy endings, or whether they’re sad endings.” ― Stephen King.
- “Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always comes around to where you started again.” ― Stephen King.
- “The most important things are the hardest to say.”— Stephen King, Different Seasons
- “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” ― Stephen King.
- “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.”— Stephen King, Needful Things
- “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”—Different Seasons
- “Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.” ― Stephen King.
- “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”—Danse Macabre
- “Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”—The Gunslinger
- “Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”—Rita Hayward and Shawshank Redemption
Stephen King Quotes on Fear
- “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
- “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”—Danse Macabre
- “If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.”— ‘Salem’s Lot
- “We need ghost stories because we, in fact, are the ghosts.”—Danse Macabre
- “It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”—Wolves of the Calla
- “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.”—Full Dark, No Stars
- “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.”—The Stand
- “There are things of such darkness and horror—just, I suppose, as there are things of such great beauty—that they will not fit through the puny human doors of perception.”—Skeleton Crew
- “I thought it was great fun to scare people. I also knew it was socially acceptable because there were a lot of horror movies out there.”
- “Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves, but they can’t help it. It’s the way they’re built. They deserve sympathy and compassion.”—Revival
Stephen King Quotes on Reading and Books
- “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ― Stephen King.
- “Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair.”—Skeleton Crew
- “The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.” ― Stephen King.
- “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ― Stephen King.
- “Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.” ― Stephen King.
- “Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.” ― Stephen King.
- “Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.” ― Stephen King.
- “Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.”— ‘Salem’s Lot.
- “Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.” ― Stephen King.
- “The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.” ― Stephen King.
Best Quotes from Stephen King Books
- “In the sudden, brief silence, she heard something within her turn over. Perhaps only her soul.” ― Carrie
- “Everything’s a lot tougher when it’s for real. That’s when you choke. When it’s for real.” ― It
- “Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.” ― The Green Mile
- “And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.” ― Pet Sematary
- “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” ― Under the Dome
- “It’s a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it’s a lot. Sometimes, it’s everything you have.” ― Storm of the Century
- “Love didn’t grow very well in a place where there was only fear.” ― The Stand
- “Men and women who can’t get over their past… That’s what ghosts are.” ― Needful Things
- “Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter.” ― Duma Key
- “At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens as all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. 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 motherf**kers in the jungle.” ―
- “We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives.” ― The Shining
- “Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” ― Hearts in Atlantis
- “No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.” ― The Stand
- “People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.” ― The Stand
- “Explanations are such cheap poetry.” ― 11/22/63
- “There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.” ― Misery
- “God grant me to SERENITY to accept what I cannot change the TENACITY to change what I may and the GOOD LUCK not to f*** up too often” ― Salem’s Lot
- “Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters.” ― The Shining
- “Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand because infinity is a two-way street.” ― The Outsider
- “It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.” ― Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
- “Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.” ― The Shining
Funny Stephen King Quotes
- “You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”
- “Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you’ll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”
- “Nobody likes a clown at midnight.”
- “Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.”
- “I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.”
- “I tend to scare myself.”
- “People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.”
- “A man who lies about beer makes enemies.”—Pet Sematary
- “There had never been a shortage of fools in the world.”—The Drawing of the Three
- “I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.”
More Famous Quotes from Stephen King Books
Stephen King, The Outsider Quotes
- “If you can’t let go of the past, the mistakes you’ve made will eat you alive.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end. We did fall through, but we helped each other out. We’re still helping each other.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “People had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “People are blind to explanations that lie outside their perception of reality.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Dreams are the way we touch the unseen world,” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “I believe there’s another dozen thoughts lined up behind each one I’m aware of.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Doesn’t look like a monster, does he?” “They rarely do.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Just promise me you’ll stop every once in a while and acknowledge the day, honey. It’s the only one you’ll have until tomorrow.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “It was no dream she said. Dreams fade. Reality doesn’t.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “I would like to believe in God,” she said, “because I don’t want to believe we just end, even though it balances the equation—since we came from blackness, it seems logical to assume that it’s to blackness we return. But I believe in the stars and the infinity of the universe. That’s the great Out There. Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand, because infinity is a two-way street.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’ ” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “When you get old, peace is about all you want.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “I had a friend who used to tell me that all the time,” Holly said and suddenly felt like crying. It was that phrase—I had a friend. Time had passed, and time probably did heal all wounds, but God, some of them healed so slowly. And the difference between I have and I had was such a gulf.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Money was no cure for sorrow, Alec reflected, but it did allow one to grieve in relative comfort.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Once you eliminate the natural, whatever remains must be supernatural?” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Time had passed, and time probably did heal all wounds, but God, some of them healed so slowly. And the difference between I have and I had was such a gulf.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Dreams are the way we touch the unseen world, that’s what I believe. They are a special gift.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “We came from blackness; it seems logical to assume that it’s to blackness we return.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Person did what a person could, whether it was setting up gravestones or trying to convince twenty-first-century men and women that there were monsters in the world, and their greatest advantage was the unwillingness of rational people to believe.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “My tongue runs like a supermarket conveyor belt on payday.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Maybe that was strange. Maybe it was sad. Maybe it was what literary types called irony.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Thought only gives the world an appearance of order to anyone weak enough to be convinced by its show.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Strip away the metaphors, Jeannie had said, and you are left with the inexplicable. The supernatural. Only that’s not possible. The supernatural may exist in books and movies, but not in the real world.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Strange, the things you noticed when your day—your life—suddenly went over a cliff you hadn’t even known was there.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Like measles, mumps, or rubella, tragedy was contagious. Unlike those diseases, there was no vaccine.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand because infinity is a two-way street” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “Thinking that if a person did begin considering supernatural possibilities, that person would no longer be able to think of himself as a completely sane person, and thinking about one’s sanity was maybe not a good thing. It was like thinking about your heartbeat: if you had to go there, you might already be in trouble.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “I believe in my consciousness and my unconscious, even though I don’t know what those things are.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “It was the look of some woman in a third world country, watching as her village burned.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
- “When the mind’s filter disappeared, the big picture disappeared with it. There was no forest, only trees. At its worst, there were no trees, either. Just bark.” ― Stephen King, The Outsider
