Top 500 Stephen King Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”

— Stephen King

152. “The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.”

— Stephen King

153. “Panic is highly contagious, especially in situations when nothing is known and everything is in flux.”

— Stephen King

154. “I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.”

— Stephen King

155. “Busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.”

— Stephen King

156. “Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it.”

— Stephen King

157. “A person’s memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It’s you.”

— Stephen King

158. “If it’s ka it’ll come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than a barn before a cyclone.”

— Stephen King

159. “I am your number one fan.”

— Stephen King

160. “Just remember that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.”

— Stephen King

161. “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”

— Stephen King

162. “We did not ask for this room or this music. We were invited in. Therefore, because the dark surrounds us, let us turn our faces to the light. Let us endure hardship to be grateful for plenty. We have been given pain to be astounded by joy. We have been given life to deny death. We did not ask for this room or this music. But because we are here, let us dance.”

— Stephen King

163. “It’s alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.”

— Stephen King

164. “I’d like to learn French well enough to write in that language.”

— Stephen King

165. “I’m convinced that FEAR is at the root, of all bad writing.”

— Stephen King

166. “Time’s the thief of memory.”

— Stephen King

167. “It’s a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it’s a lot. Sometimes, it’s everything you have.”

— Stephen King

168. “It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”

— Stephen King

169. “When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”

— Stephen King

170. “I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.”

— Stephen King

171. “There will be water if God wills it.”

— Stephen King

172. “Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

— Stephen King

173. “I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book – something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.”

— Stephen King

174. “Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”

— Stephen King

175. “Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as ‘good’ and other sorts as ‘bad’ is fearful behavior.”

— Stephen King

176. “The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.”

— Stephen King

177. “Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?”

— Stephen King

178. “Henry Thoreau said that we don’t own things; things own us. Every new object – whether it’s a home, a car, a television, or a fancy phone like that one – is something more we must carry on our backs.”

— Stephen King

179. “No matter how many times you shake it the last drop always ends up in your pants.”

— Stephen King

180. “City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.”

— Stephen King

181. “When love leaves the world, all hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.”

— Stephen King

182. “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 – Jesus, did you?”

— Stephen King

183. “Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant.”

— Stephen King

184. “Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book-at least every one worth reading-is about something.”

— Stephen King

185. “I believe that the combination of pencil and memory creates a kind of practical magic, and magic is dangerous.”

— Stephen King

186. “Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.”

— Stephen King

187. “Life turns on a dime.”

— Stephen King

188. “Teaching school is like having jumper cables hooked to your brain, draining all the juice out of you.”

— Stephen King

189. “The devil’s voice is sweet to hear.”

— Stephen King

190. “Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.”

— Stephen King

191. “Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.”

— Stephen King

192. “Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.”

— Stephen King

193. “You have to stay faithful to what you’re working on.”

— Stephen King

194. “Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.”

— Stephen King

195. “French is the language that turns dirt into romance.”

— Stephen King

196. “A writer’s notebook is the best way in the world to immortalize bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around.”

— Stephen King

197. “It’s a hard life if you don’t weaken.”

— Stephen King

198. “No good friends, no bad friends; only people you want, need to be with. People who build their houses in your heart.”

— Stephen King

199. “It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.”

— Stephen King

200. “Pride, that invisible bone that keeps the neck stiff.”

— Stephen King