Authors — Quotes

Stephen King Quotes: 127

Books are a uniquely portable magic.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
Get busy living or get busy dying.
Different Seasons
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.
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?"and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.
Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
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.
The scariest moment is always just before you start.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.
You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.
If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.
A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.
Skeleton Crew
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.
Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.
That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.
The Stand
Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.
Bag of Bones
Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.
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.
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
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.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.
The Green Mile
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
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.
FEAR stands for fuck everything and run.
Doctor Sleep
In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.
The Stand
If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame.
Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows
We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.
11/22/63
It is the tale, not he who tells it.
No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.
Wolves of the Calla
She can't help it,' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.
Under the Dome
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.
Duma Key
You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.
Night Shift
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..
It
Am I weird?" "Yeah. But so what? Everybody's weird.
Different Seasons
I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.
Sometimes dead is better
Pet Sematary