Quotes by Stephen King

Once, during the drinking phase, Wendy had accused him of desiring his own destruction but not possessing the necessary moral fiber to support a full-blown deathwish. So he manufactured ways in which other people could do it, lopping a piece at a time off himself and their family.

Hi,’ Jake said. ‘I met you earlier today, but you were a lot younger then.’ ‘I was a lot younger ten minutes ago.

..Thirtys the end of being young, forty is where you stop fooling yourself.

Youre a dangerous fool who should be sent west, he told the unconscious man. You have forgotten the face of your father.

And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone else sitting around the fire is often nodding and smiling and looking solemny thoughtful.

All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one...

Not everyone believes in ghost’s, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?“ She had shaken her head slowly. Men and women who can’t get over the past,” Aunt Evie said. “That’s what ghost’s are. Not them.” She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. “The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay.

It didn´t occur to me until later that there´s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.

Why is it that so many people think all the answers are in their wallet?

Its hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you dont have time to read, you dont have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that.

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesnt, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isnt grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story … to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.

You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, Oh well, let it go, thats what copyeditors are for.

At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style...but as we move along, youd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.

Life is more than love and pleasure,I came to dig for treasure.If you want to play, you gotta pay,You know its always been that wayWe all came digging for treasure.

Its like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?

Better to be dirty than dead.