Quotes from Stephen King

Any game looks straight if everyone is being cheated at once.

Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there's little fun to be had in explanations; they're antithetical to the poetry of fear.

A person's never too old for stories. Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them. - Roland Deschain

It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.

Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn't it?

you must not come lightly to the blank page.

Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

Nobody likes to see a stupid guy wise up.

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.

All right I think we've been down here in the dark long enough. There's a whole other world upstairs. Take my hand, Constant Reader, and I'll be happy to lead you back into the sunshine. I'm happy to go there because I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.

A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.

We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.

Let me say it again: You must not come lightly to the blank page.

Nora Roberts is cool.

Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty.

I don't have to listen to rumors about a man when I can judge him for myself.

It's 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.

Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic.

He knew as well as we in our own world do that the road to hell is paved with good intentions--but he also knew that, for human beings, good intentions are sometimes all there are. Angels may be safe from damnation, but human beings are less fortunate things, and for them hell is always close.

Some of this book—perhaps too much—has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. 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.

Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?

All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.

If you can't let go of the past, the mistakes you've made will eat you alive.