Top 500 Stephen King Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Head clear. Mouth shut. See much. Say little.”

— Stephen King

402. “Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act.”

— Stephen King

403. “It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”

— Stephen King

404. “Few if any seemed to have grasped the Principle of Reality; new knowledge leads always to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search.”

— Stephen King

405. “For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.”

— Stephen King

406. “This is how a man looks when he’s deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.”

— Stephen King

407. “The most important things are the hardest to say because words diminish them.”

— Stephen King

408. “The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words make them smaller. When they were in your head, they were limitless; but when they come out they seem to be no bigger than normal things.”

— Stephen King

409. “I’m still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.”

— Stephen King

410. “God doesn’t bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.”

— Stephen King

411. “Successful rebellions always begin in secret.”

— Stephen King

412. “The Question was this: If you could jump into a time machine and go back to 1932, would you kill Hitler?”

— Stephen King

413. “Superhero movies and comic books teach a lesson that runs directly counter to the culture-of-violence idea: guns are for bad guys too cowardly to fight like men.”

— Stephen King

Featured in: Book Quotes

414. “George Orwell knew when he wrote 1984: if you say a thing often enough, it will be accepted as truth.”

— Stephen King

415. “If something is accessible to a lot of people, it’s got to be dumb because most people are dumb.”

— Stephen King

416. “Kill your darlings.”

— Stephen King

417. “But that’s enough. Fun is fun and done is done. Turn out their lights, beautiful.”

— Stephen King

418. “They say that loving eyes can never see, but that’s a fool’s axiom. Sometimes, they see too much.”

— Stephen King

419. “I believe that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man.”

— Stephen King

420. “When you ask me what I’m afraid of, I’d say I still go to see ghost movies when I get a chance or some sort of supernatural being, but it doesn’t scare me as it scared me when I was a child.”

— Stephen King

421. “Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”

— Stephen King

422. “The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.”

— Stephen King

423. “When you’re six, most of your Bingo balls are still floating around in the draw-tank.”

— Stephen King

424. “Her breasts swayed like ancient cracked punching bags.”

— Stephen King

425. “You say true, I say thankya.”

— Stephen King

426. “I don’t take notes; I don’t outline, I don’t do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I’m a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can’t sell it as caviar.”

— Stephen King

427. “It’s strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.”

— Stephen King

428. “He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him making him smile.”

— Stephen King

429. “Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That’s what makes them children.”

— Stephen King

430. “Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve.”

— Stephen King

431. “I worry about you Bev. I worry a lot.”

— Stephen King

432. “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

433. “God always punishes us for what we can’t imagine.”

— Stephen King

434. “And suddenly it didn’t seem to matter any more, nothing would matter if she could turn over, turn over and see the stars, turn over and look once and die.”

— Stephen King

435. “Was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?”

— Stephen King

436. “I am in trouble here. This woman is not right.”

— Stephen King

437. “If you can’t laugh when things go bad – laugh and put on a little carnival – then you’re either dead or wishing you were.”

— Stephen King

438. “The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”

— Stephen King

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439. “The King is in his Tower, eating bread and honey. The Breakers in the basement, making all the money.”

— Stephen King

440. “It was one of those perfect summer days which, in a world where everything was on track and on the beam, you would never forget.”

— Stephen King

441. “And in real life endings aren’t always neat, whether they’re happy endings, or whether they’re sad endings.”

— Stephen King

Featured in: Real Quotes

442. “Time slowed and reality bent; on and on the eggman went.”

— Stephen King

443. “The wife whose sweetly given reply in the face of any problem would be, “Whatever you think is best, dear.” Women, take note: a wife like that never needs to fear bubbling away the last of her life through a cut throat.”

— Stephen King

444. “You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you’d turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it’s own imperatives.”

— Stephen King

445. “The redness was going out of the light now, the remains of the day were a fading pink, the color of wild roses.”

— Stephen King

446. “Teddy, Vern, Chris: I don’t shut up. I grow up. And when I look at you, I throw up. Aghhh! Gordie: And then your mom goes around the corner and she licks it up.”

— Stephen King

447. “Black as night and as beautiful as forever.”

— Stephen King

448. “A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.”

— Stephen King

449. “The universe is large, he thought. It contains multitudes. It also contains me, and in this moment I am wonderful. I have a right to be wonderful.”

— Stephen King

450. “It’s not the pain I’m afraid of; I know about the pain. What I’m afraid of is the end of this small, sweet dream.”

— Stephen King