Stephen King It Quotes & Sayings

And there he would either be mercifully annihilated or live forever, insane and yet conscious inside It's homicidal endless formless hungry being. — Stephen King

Dastardly devious, cleverly conceived, and just a whole lot of fun to read, DEATH PERCEPTION is Lee Allen Howard on fire and at his finest. Rife with winsome weirdness, it's like the mutant stepchild of Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King, mixing a truly unique paranormal coming-of-age story with a quirky cast of offbeat noir characters into a novel that's simply unforgettable ... and hilariously original. A supernatural crime story, blazing with creative intrigue ... don't miss it. — Michael Arnzen

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

Do you know the phrase watershed moment, buddy?" I nodded. You didn't have to be an English teacher to know that one; you didn't even have to be literate. It was one of those annoying linguistic shortcuts that show up on cable TV news shows, day in and day out. Others include connect the dots and at this point in time. — Stephen King

Scaring people is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. — Stephen King

Time, Eddie had decided during this period, was in large part created by external events. When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And when everything stopped happening, time apparently quit altogether. Just packed up and went to Coney Island. Weird but true. — Stephen King

It occurred to me that the man I really wanted to hurt was safely out of my reach, standing behind a shield of years. — Stephen King

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

Well then, I'm going to tell you a secret almost every newspaper man and woman who's been at it awhile knows: in real life, the number of actual stories - those with beginnings, middles, and ends - are slim and none. But if you can give your readers just one unknown thing (two at the very outside) and then kick in what Dave Bowie there calls a musta-been, your reader will tell himself a story. — Stephen King

A mob always picked its own leaders, and it always picked the right ones. — Stephen King

Expansive," he says to the empty room, but it's more than that. "Outward. This guy writes outward. He learned with others. And wrote for others. — Stephen King

I'd say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts. — Stephen King

If you haven't considered it already, consider it now: there is every possibility that some of us, or all of us, may live and triumph, only to stand trial for murder. — Stephen King

Writing is like being in a dream state or under self-directed hypnosis. It induces a state of recall that - while not perfect - is pretty spooky. — Stephen King

home and there it sits on the counter, going sour. — Stephen King

Is it ghosts or just the mirror
That makes ya want to flee? — Stephen King

Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls-Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay-wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him.. — Stephen King

By Annie Wilkes ...
If you can get into that chair all by yourself, Paul, she said at last, then I think you can fill in your f******* n's.
She then closed the door and locked it again. Paul sat looking at it for a long time, almost as if there was something to see. He was too flabberghasted to do anything else. — Stephen King

Can the future hsitory of the world be so fragile that it will not allow two high school teachers to meet and fall in love? To marry, to dance to Beatles tunes like "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and live unremarkable lives? — Stephen King

If something is accessible to a lot of people, it's got to be dumb because most people are dumb. — Stephen King

Come down and eat chicken with me beautiful. It's soooo dark. — Stephen King

Guilt is like a sore, endlessly fascinating, and the guilty party feels compelled to examine it and pick at it, so that it never really heals. — Stephen King

His fingers were permanently yellowed with chalk dust rather than nicotine, but it was still the residue of an addicting substance. — Stephen King

I don't understand this at all. I don't understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics ... culture ... history ... aren't those natural ingredients in any story, if it's told well? I mean ... ' He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. 'I mean ... can't you guys just let a story be a story? — Stephen King

It had been like swallowing a gust of October wind. — 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 takes the average human seven minutes to go to sleep, but according to Hand's Human Physiology, it takes the same average human fifteen to twenty minutes to wake up. — Stephen King

The universe (he said) offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a nonliving brain - although it may think it can - the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite. — Stephen King

When I gave up dope and alcohol, my immediate feeling was 'I've saved my life, but there'll be a price because I'll have nothing that buzzes me any more'. But I enjoyed my kids. My wife loved me and I loved her. And eventually the writing came back and I discovered that the writing was enough. Stupid thing is that probably it always had been. — 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

Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel sh*t from a sitting position. — Stephen King

I've made some things for you, Constant Reader; you see them laid out before you in the moonlight. But before you look at the little handcrafted treasures I have for sale, let's talk about them for a bit, shall we? It won't take long. Here, sit down beside me. And do come a little closer. I don't bite. Except . . . we've known each other for a very long time, and I suspect you know that's not entirely true. Is it? — Stephen King

At the end of almost every AA meeting, someone read the Promises. One of these was 'We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it'. Dan thought he would always regret the past, but he had quit trying to shut the door. Why bother, when it would just come open again? The fucking had no latch, let alone a lock. — Stephen King

There was something wrong with that town, and I think I knew it from the first. — Stephen King

It is the line soldier who ultimately pays for any foreign intervention, — Stephen King

I'm trying to justify it somehow, he thought, meaning it not in the moral sense but rather in the mathematical one. Buildings are built by observing certain natural laws; natural laws may be expressed by equations; equations must be justified. Where was the justification in what had happened less than half an hour ago? — Stephen King

Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please!
Come in close where everyone can see!
I got a tale to tell, it isn't gonna cost a dime!
(And if you believe that,
we're gonna get along just fine.) — Stephen King

I just write about what I feel I want to write about. I'm like a kid. I get an idea, and it's like a kid's toy that you push and tug around the room. It's fun, it's bright, it's pretty and maybe it'll go clack-clack or whiz-whiz, whatever it happens to do. I like to make believe. — Stephen King

What comes in when daylight leaves is a kind of certainty: that beneath the skin there is a secret, some mystery both black and bright. You feel this mystery in every breath, you see it in every shadow, you expect to plunge into it at every turn of a step. — Stephen King

Belief in the supernatural or belief in wild talents like precognition and telepathy and telekinesis and things like that, it seems to me that belief in those things is just very, very freeing. — Stephen King

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time. — Stephen Hawking

Abruptly he started the car and put it in gear and drove away, trying not to look back. And of course he did, and of course the porch was empty. They had gone back inside. It was as if the Overlook had swallowed them. — Stephen King

Flattery," Wendy told him, "is when your daddy says he likes my new yellow slacks even if he doesn't or when he says I don't need to take off five pounds." "Oh. Is it lying for fun? — Stephen King

In a marriage, words are like rain. And the land of a marriage is filled with dry washes and arroyos that can become raging rivers in almost the wink of an eye. The therapists believe in talk, but most of them are either divorced or queer. It's silence that is a marriage's best friend. — Stephen King

Certain empty houses that seemed to stare like the faces of people suffering from terrible mental illness. An empty barn on the outskirts of town, the hayloft door swinging open and closed on rusty hinges, first disclosing darkness, then hiding it, then disclosing it again. — Stephen King

What you got, son, I call it shinin on, the Bible calls it having visions, and there's scientists that call it precognition. I've read up on it, son. I've studied on it. They all mean seeing the future. — Stephen King

Bill looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just forded a river. "Ih-It's scuh-scuh-hared of u-u-us, you know, " he said. "I can fuh-feel th-that. I swear to Guh-God I c-c-can. " Bev nodded soberly. "I think you're right. " "H-H-Help m-m-me, " Bill said. "P-P-Pl-Please. H-H-Help m-m-me. — Stephen King

The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king. — Stephen King

It was safer to walk softly, and surer to ask instead of telling. — Stephen King

I buy the same ground chuck week after week. I've fed it to hundreds or thousands of people, in spite of those stupid catburger rumors, and it always renews itself. — Stephen King

The entrance ramp had been blocked by an overturned semi. Bright-burning flares had been scattered around it like birthday candles on some idiot child's cake. — Stephen King

But writing is a wonderful and terrible thing. It opens deep wells of memory that were previously capped. — Stephen King

Two pages of the passive voice - just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction - make me want to scream. It's weak, it's circuitous, and it's frequently tortuous, as well. How about this: My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun. Oh, man - who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea - sweeter and more forceful, as well - might be this: My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I'll never forget it. I'm not in love with this because it uses with twice in four words, but at least we're out of that awful passive voice. — Stephen King

Ka was like a wheel, its one purpose to turn, and in the end it always came back to the place where it had started. — Stephen King

It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor. — Stephen King

Florida's full of old people-they don't call it God's waiting room for nothing-but precious few of em grew up here. — Stephen King

But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don't think it's in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart. — Stephen King

I always drank, from when it was legal for me to drink. And there was never a time for me when the goal wasn't to get as hammered as I could possibly afford to. I never understood social drinking, that's always seemed to me like kissing your sister. — Stephen King

Sometimes things work just because you think they work. It's as good a definition of faith as any. — Stephen King

Stand right there. If your ass loses contact with that wall, you are going to lose contact with life as you have always known it. You understand?
Roland — Stephen King

But nothing. Accept what's done, Louis, and follow your heart. We did what was right this time . . . at least, I hope to Christ it was right. Another time it could be wrong - wrong as hell. — Stephen King

Tharn. It was a good word for a bad state of mind. — Stephen King

I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out. — Stephen King

She stood watching a ritual she had seen many times before, yet which now seemed odd and extremely archaic; as if everything - the hill, the ox, the Mage, the cauldron, the king, the people looking on - everything belonged to a time so far away, so obscurely ancient that it could no longer be comprehended, only felt in the pulse of blood that flowed through her veins. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Why, then you go on to Death Row at state prison and just
enjoy all that good food until it's time to ride the lightning. It won't be
long. — Stephen King

Life was a wheel, and it always came back around. — Stephen King

I've been talking about how electronic books will come, and how important they will be, and all of a sudden Stephen King publishes one. I feel a complete idiot, as it should have been me. — Douglas Adams

We all die in time," the gunslinger said. "It's not just the world that moves on. — Stephen King

Every troublemaker's excuse! Put it up your bum with the rest of the dirt! — Stephen King

Sometimes home is where the heart is, Eddie thought randomly. I believe that. Old Bobby Frost said home's the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Unfortunately, it's also the place where, once you're in there, they don't ever want to let you out. — Stephen King

There's a saying - "Write what you know." It's bad advice if you take it as an unbreakable rule, but good advice if you use it as a foundation. — Stephen King

Laughter, Susannah would later reflect, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny. — Stephen King

Them up when the other team had a runner on third. By the time the Yankees came to town - this was going on to the end of April - the whole stadium would flush orange when the Bombers had a runner on third, which they did often in that series. Because the Yankees kicked the living shit out of us and took over first place. It was no fault of the kid's; he hit in every game and tagged out Bill Skowron between home and third when the lug got caught in a rundown. — Stephen King

Instinct's the iron skeleton under all our ideas of free will. — Stephen King

In here I'm the guy who can get things for you ... outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. I don't think I could make it. — Stephen King

He was a romantic, he knew it, and he guarded the knowledge jealously. — Stephen King

Any writer takes inspiration from what they read and watch, and over their career works on forming their own voice. I think it was probably Stephen King who made me want to become a writer. — Tim Lebbon

If,' Roland said. 'An old teacher of mine used to call it the only word a thousand letters long. — Stephen King

It's his voice that I remember, certainly: my father's voice, low and slow, how he would chuckle sometimes or laugh outright. — Stephen King

Confession may or may not be good for the soul, but it's undoubtedly soothing to the nerves. — Stephen King

It was the last town in what was then a civilized country. Once Tim asked his father what civilized meant. "Taxes," Big Ross said, and laughed - but not in a funny way. — Stephen King

Pain was a tool, after all. Sometimes it was the best tool. — Stephen King

Remember, cool is not a way of life; it's a state of being. Like your height. I can't help being 6'3, and I can't help being cool. — Stephen King

She remembered Scott saying that people shouldn't be allowed houses with more than two toilets to shit in, it gives them delusions of grandeur. — Stephen King

But it's hard for a man to give up all his pleasures, even when they don't pleasure him no more. — Stephen King

... it's always wise to check your maybes. — Stephen King

Except it's not treasure we've come to bury. Just my daughter's castrated cat. He — Stephen King

Castle Rock Middle School was a frowning pile of red brick standing between the Post Office and the Library, a holdover from the time when the town elders didn't feel entirely comfortable with a school unless it looked like a reformatory. — Stephen King

There's nothing like TV when it comes to eroding a regional accent. — Stephen King

If you disaprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It's what I have. — Stephen King

This is dying - I know because I've done it before. — Stephen King

Theres a constant struggle going on about how much will be illegal and how much you will be free to take. Can we open the pharmacies? Can we put Valium and Percodan and those sorts of things out on the shelves? I wouldn't take it. I don't know. — Stephen King

When you came right down to it, how did anyone know they weren't a character in some writer's story, or a transient thought in some bus-riding schmoe's head, or a momentary mote in God's eye? — Stephen King

Was it God that made magic, or was it magic that made God? — Stephen King

Eventual, as Pug used to say. When he wanted to say something was really good, he's never say it was awesome, like most people do; he'd say it was eventual. How funny is that? The old Pugmeister. I wonder how he's doing. — Stephen King

It didn't occur to her that this was an amazing piece of shooting, especially with a pistol; she was a gunslinger, after all, and shooting was her business. Besides, — Stephen King

I fell in love with her partly because I understood what she was doing with her work. I fell because she understood what she was doing with it. I also fell in love because she was wearing a sexy black dress and silk stockings, the kind that hook with garters. — Stephen King

You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism. — Stephen King

Tim stared at the steel rod in the gloved hand. "Is that a magic wand?"
The Covenant Man appeared to consider. "I suppose so. Although it started life as the gearshift of a Dodge Dart, America's economy car, young Tim."
"What's America?"
"A kingdom filled with toy-loving idiots. It has no part in our palaver. — Stephen King

The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. — Stephen King