Quotes & Sayings About Horror Stephen King

Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym. — Stephen King

Those old things were still painful to think about, still bright with the childish primary colors of fear and horror. — Stephen King

In the end, though, it's all about giving back the teeth that the current 'sweetie-vamp' craze has, by and large, stolen from the bloodsuckers. It's about making them scary again. — Stephen King

And then, eyes widening in horror, he saw the word REDRUM reflecting dimly from the glass dome, now reflected twice. And he saw that it spelled MURDER. Danny — Stephen King

Never will you talk to me like that again. — Stephen King

The two of them had discovered it was all right to open the closets ... as long as you didn't poke too far back in them. Because things might still be lurking there, ready to bite. — Stephen King

Everybody wants to psychoanalyze horror. They don't want to psychoanalyze a book like Gay Talese's "Sex with Your Neighbor" or something like that. It's pretty much accepted that Americans should be interested in who they're diddling and how they're doing it. — Stephen King

Here is something I learned in 1922: there are always worse things waiting. You think you have seen the most terrible thing, the one that coalesces all your nightmares into a freakish horror that actually exists, and the only consolation is that there can be nothing worse. Even if there is, your mind will snap at the sight of it, and you will know no more. But there is worse, your mind does not snap, and somehow you carry on. You might understand that all the joy has gone ... — Stephen King

There are a lot of people in the field [ of horror stories] that I do read. There is a lot of stuff that is written in this field, though, that is not very good. You just have to look for the good stuff. — Stephen King

We'll eat your steam and lap up your blood. But first, we'll drink your screams — Stephen King

Here is the final truth of horror movies: They do not love death, as some have suggested; they love life. They do not celebrate deformity but by dwelling on deformity, they sing of health and energy. By showing us the miseries of the damned, they help us to rediscover the smaller (but never petty) joys of our own lives. — Stephen King

Not all is silent in the halls of the dead and the rooms of ruin. Even now some of the stuff the Old Ones left behind still works. And that's really the horror of it, wouldn't you say? Yes. The exact horror of it. — Stephen King

Your friends drag you down, Gordie. Don't you know that? [ ... ] Your friends do. They're like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can't save them. You can only drown with them. — Stephen King

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up — Stephen King

Better than cancer or Alzheimer's, that prime horror of anyone who has spent his life making a living by his wits. — Stephen King

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. — Stephen King

Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye — Stephen King

If I had taken time to think, it would have gotten away again, but conscious thinking had been canceled by pain, surprise, and the horror I suppose almost any man feels when he sees blood pouring from a part of his body that was whole only seconds before. — Stephen King

Those eyes filled him with the paralyzed, hopeless horror that the hen feels for the weasel. — Stephen King

Coldness went marching up his arms like the feet of evil fairies. — Stephen King

Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly. — Stephen King

The advantage of horror books is to take the reader and cut him out of the pack and work on him one on one. It has its advantages because the people that are there in the movie theater really are a mob. If you get one guy alone you can do a more efficient job of scaring him. — Stephen King

I grew up on all sorts of horror - Hammer Horror and Vincent Price's 'Theatre Of Blood.' I loved the hidden, scary layers, but there wasn't that much around for youngsters in terms of horror books. I can remember reading Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' and 'Cujo,' but I thought there should be more for teenaged horror fans. — Darren Shan

great literature is literature that speaks to deep, fundamental human truths and experience in a way that is relatable to the reader and that may provoke engagement or facilitate insight into these truths and experiences. If these truths and experiences are about breaches of the normal, then surely horror has a place in literature, and in facts may proffer deep engagement with the most profound aspects of our existence. Sometimes only horror can say what needs to be said. — Jacob M. Held

So in that sense, I and my fellow horror writers are absorbing and defusing all your fears and anxieties and insecurities and taking them upon ourselves. We're sitting in the darkness beyond the flickering warmth of your fire, cackling into our caldrons and spitting out spider webs of words, all the time sucking the sickness from your minds and spewing it out into the night. — Stephen King

Five police cars were parked in the yard, two drawn up nose-to-nose behind the car's back bumper, as if the cops expected the big gray sedan to start up by itself, like that old Plymouth in the horror movie, and make a run for it. — Stephen King

Horror movies often work better when we have a stake in the game. The more we care about the characters, the more human they are to us, the more appealing they are to us and the more effective the horror tends to be. — Stephen King

I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands ... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh. — Stephen King

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. — Stephen King

Lover, she whispers, and closes her eyes.
It falls upon her.
Love is like dying. — Stephen King

Horror, terror, fear, panic: these are the emotions which drive wedges between us, split us off from the crowd, and make us alone. It is paradoxical that feelings and emotions we associate with the "mob instinct" should do this, but crowds are lonely places to be, we're told, a fellowship with no love in it. The melodies of the horror tale are simple and repetitive, and they are melodies of disestablishment and disintegration . . . but another paradox is that the ritual outletting of these emotions seems to bring things back to a more stable and constructive state again. — Stephen King

It all floats down here! — Stephen King

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. — Stephen King

When I look back on that time, it's with the strangest stew of emotions: love, longing, terror, horror, regret, and the deep sweetness only those who've been near death can know. I think it's how Adam and Eve must have felt. Surely they looked back at Eden, don't you think, as they started barefoot down the path to where we are now, in our glum political world of bullets and bombs and satellite TV? Looked past the angel guarding the shut gate with his fiery sword? Sure. I think they must have wanted one more look at the green world they had lost, with its sweet water and kind-hearted animals. And its snake, of course. — Stephen King

[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue. — Dave Eggers

There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take. — Stephen King

Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be. — Stephen King

I can't get why people are afraid of books or films which are horror. What's the scary of the film "Cube 1,2,3" - Yeah it was brutal I get scary, but after an hour I'm fine. I just continue to live my life. I check out "Saw", the most brutal film ever watched, yeah I could have some kind a bad thoughts and other stuff about the film. Like to think that this guy "Saw", is there with the bike, but after few days everything it went on the right path. I had chance to see what is the real face of the killers - "Saw" and what does goverment do "Cube"!

GreenMile was a sad story, I still can't believe that Stephen King has written it! — Deyth Banger

You stole my story and something's got to be done about it. — Stephen King

If you had to put my love life into a genre, it would probably be horror. By the same token, I'm not even sure that the master of scary shit, Stephen King, could adequately express it on paper. — Katie Ashley

Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me! — Stephen King

My first six books were horror, I think because when I was young I loved Stephen King. John Wyndham, Daphne Du Maurier, and it's natural to try and emulate the books you first loved. — Sarah Pinborough

Sometimes to be at home is like a nightmare by Stephen King. — Deyth Banger

I started after him ... and the clown looked back. I saw Its eyes, and all at once I understood who It was."
"Who was it, Don?" Harold Gardner asked softly.
"It was Derry," Don Hagarty said. "It was this town. — Stephen King

There was an ocean above us, held in by a thin sac that might rupture and let down a flood at any second. — Stephen King

It was sort of like being in one of those love-and-horror supernatural novels, the kind Mrs. Robinson in the school library sniffily called "tweenager porn." In those books the girls dallied with werewolves, vampires - even zombies - but hardly ever became those things. It was also nice to have a grown man stand up for her, and it didn't hurt that he was handsome, in a scruffy kind of way that reminded her a little of Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy, a show she and Emma Deane secretly watched on Em's computer. — Stephen King

Hello?" he asked as he went ... just so that anyone intent on killing him would know exactly where to look. — Stephen King

Norris didn't cry, but he was apt to puke on them, the way he had puked on homer gamache that time he had found homer sprawled in a ditch out by homeland cemetary, beaten to death with his own artificial arm. — Stephen King

Horror's a worm that needs to be coughed out before it breeds. — Stephen King

Invitation to Dance-
It's a Dance. And sometimes they turn the lights off in this ballroom.
But we'll dance anyway, you and I. Even in the Dark. Especially in the Dark.
May I have the pleasure? — Stephen King

The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list. — Victor LaValle

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. — Stephen King

Flakes of snow swirled and danced across the porch. The Overlook faced it as it had for nearly three-quarters of a century, its darkened windows now bearded with snow, indifferent to the fact it was now cut off from the world ... Inside its shell the three of them went about their early evening routine, like microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster. — Stephen King

Bill suited the action to the word, getting up and leaning over the handlebars and pumping the pedals at a lunatic rate. Looking at Bill's back, which was amazingly broad for a boy of eleven-going-on-twelve, watching it work under the duffel coat, the shoulders slanting first one way and then the other as he shifted his weight from one pedal to the other, Richie suddenly became sure that they were invulnerable...they would live forever and ever. — Stephen King

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 motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago. — 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

Carrie was a terrific piece of work. At the end of the movie comes, when Amy Irving kneels down to put the flowers on Carrie's grave, a hand comes up through the grave and seizes her by the arm. The audience went to the roof, totally to the roof. It was just the most amazing reaction. And I thought, 'We have a monster hit on our hands. Brian De Palma has done something new. He's actually created a shock ending that shocks an audience that was ready for a horror film.' And there were several people who did it after that. — Stephen King

Have you ever turned to the end of a horror novel to see if the hero made it out of the darkness and into the light? If you have ever done this, I have three simple words which I feel it is my duty to convey: SHAME ON YOU! It is low to mark your place in a book by folding down the corner of the page where you left off; TURNING TO THE END TO SEE HOW IT CAME OUT is even lower. If you have this habit, I urge you to break it . . . break it at once! — Stephen King

I'm sure that the book is incrediable, phenomenal and so on and so on going in positive direction... But the film wasn't made well (I'm talking about NeedFul Things by Stephen King), the effects weren't good, some scenes were missed, for example I'm very curiouis how does the guy kills his wife with the harmer... The scene reminds me for Shining, but Unfortunately in the Shining there were more possibilities to be saw this scene, than in this film... If some disadvantages will be fixed, then I'm sure that the film will be pretty interesting, however to don't forget about the quality! — Deyth Banger

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

Even a zombie lurching through the night can seem pretty cheerful compared to the existential comedy/horror of the ozone layer dissolving under the combined assault of a million fluorocarbon spray cans of deodorant. — Stephen King

The most classic horror tale of this latter type is the Old Testament story of Job, who becomes human Astro-Turf in a kind of spiritual Superbowl between God and Satan. — Stephen King

Sing a song of suspense in which the players die.
Four and twenty ravens in an Edgar Allan Pie.
When the pie was broken, the ravens couldn't sing.
Their throats had been sliced open by Stephen, the new King.
The King was in his writing house, stifling a laugh
While his queen was in a tizzy of her bloody Lovecraft.
When the dead maid got the garden for her rank as royal whore,
King's shovel made it double and he married nevermore. — Jessica McHugh

There were no horror movies or horror books to speak of in the '40s. I picked the '50s because that pretty well spans my life as an appreciator - as somebody who's been involved with this mass cult of horror, from radio and movies and Saturday matinees and books. In the '40s there really wasn't that much. People don't want to read about horrible things in horrible times. So, in the '40s, there was Val Lutin with The Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People and there wasn't much else. — Stephen King

When it comes to horror there's a strange need to analyze. When "evil children" fad happened, there was The Exorcist and The Other and The Omen. People would say, "What this really means is that Americans don't want to have kids anymore. They feel hostility towards their own children. They feel they're being tied down and dragged down." In fact, in most cases, what those books are about is nice children who are beset by forces beyond their control. — Stephen King

But a spider was, after all, only a spider. Perhaps at the end, when the masks of horror were laid aside, there was nothing with which the human mind could not cope. — Stephen King

When Stephen King elaborated on his inspirations for his novel "Carrie" he draws from a time when he was a young man, and describes his impression when he came upon a statue of Christ on the cross, hanging there in misery, and he thought "If THAT guy ever came back, he probably wouldn't be in a saving mood." — Stephen King

I just know I'm too much of a wuss for Stephen King's books. I'm way too chicken to read horror. — Stephenie Meyer

James Patterson, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, so far these are the best horror writers, but I will continue searching for other interesting horror and twisted writers even like James Wan. — Deyth Banger

Death in the horror movies is when the monsters get you. — Stephen King

I don't really get philosophical, but I believe that nice people are strong and usually in my horror stories, I don't like to write about the old standard where some rotten guy gets chased by a mean spirit that gets him in the end.I'd rather write about nice people that are menaced from outside by some sort of evil power and who sort of slug it out. — Stephen King

They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil. — Stephen King

I've been a fan of vampire fiction since way, way back - I loved Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Robert McCammon, Shirley Jackson, lots of great horror and paranormal fiction. — Rachel Caine

I wanted monsters that ate whole cities, radioactive corpses that came out of the ocean and ate surfers, and girls in black bras who looked like trailer trash. Horror movies, science fiction movies, movies about losers on motorcycles- this was the stuff that turned my dials up to ten. — Stephen King

Then his lids closed slowly over his slightly bloodshot eyes, and Mort Rainey, who had yet to discover what true horror was all about, fell asleep. — 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

You have the right to remain silent,' the big cop said in his robot's voice. 'If you do not choose to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I'm going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you? — Stephen King

Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads. They go to stock-car races and the horror movies and the wrestling matches they have in Portland Expo. Maybe what she said smacked of all those things, but I admired her for saying out loud, all the same
the price of honesty is always high. She had an admirable grasp of the fundamentals. Besides, she was tiny and pretty. — Richard Bachman

As if the cops expected the big gray sedan to start up by itself, like that old Plymouth in the horror movie, — Stephen King

What your mind sees when you close your eyes marks the entrance to an endless universe: your imagination. — Stephen Helmes

Horror spawns horror — Stephen King

It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls-as little as one may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. 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. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself. — Stephen King

Moonlight flooded in the windows and silvered the room, turning it into a lagoon of dreams — Stephen King

It's all of a piece, I thought. It's an echo so close to perfect you can't tell which one is the living voice and which is the ghost-voice returning. For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark. Mike — Stephen King

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought. — Stephen King

Then, as understanding began to trickle through his shock, he felt an escalating sense of horror. It had finally happened; he had finally lost enough of his mind so that other people would be able to *tell*. — Stephen King

I knew there were no ghosts in there, but on the other hand, what if there were? — Stephen King

It's not the tales of Stephen King that I've read,
I need protection from the things in my head ... — Jimmy Buffett

There are always worse things waiting. You think you have seen the most terrible thing, the one that coalesces all your nightmares into a freakish horror that actually exists, and the only consolation is that there can be nothing worse. Even if there is, your mind will snap at the sight of it, and you will know no more. But there is worse, your mind does not snap, and somehow you carry on. You might understand that all the joy has gone out of the world for you, you might wish you were the one who was dead - but you go on. You might realize that you are in a hell of your own making, but you go on nevertheless. Because there is nothing else to do. — Stephen King

I am your number one fan. — Stephen King

There's an idea that hell is other people. My idea is that it might be repetition. — Stephen King

Swear to me swear to me that if it isn't dead you'll all come back. — Stephen King

The things a man sees when he ain't got a gun.
Watson the Caretaker — Stephen King

The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi. When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated. — Stephen King

I also employed the world-famous Hemingway Defense. Although never clearly articulated (it would not be manly to do so), the Hemingway Defense goes something like this: as a writer, I am a very sensitive fellow, but I am also a man, and real men don't give in to their sensitivities. Only sissy-men do that. Therefore I drink. How else can I face the existential horror of it all and continue to work? — Stephen King

It ain't the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive. — Stephen King

I noticed the dudes in the ambulance were staying put; I hoped they were calling for backup, or maybe somebody who could do an exorcism, or maybe my pal Stephen King, because if anybody on earth could figure a way out of this mess, it'd be Uncle Stevie. — Tobe Hooper

This is probably the single great subject of horror fiction: our need to cope with a mystery that can be understood only with the aid of a helpful imagination. — Stephen King

Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn't known dogs could scream. — Stephen King

In my formative years, I never missed the 'Creature Double Feature' on Saturday afternoon TV, even if it meant switching back and forth between 'Gamera' and the Red Sox. I did a book report on Stephen King's 'Night Shift' in seventh grade. Unrated Italian horror movies became a weekly rite of passage once I hit seventeen. — Chuck Hogan