Quotes from Stephen King

Coincidences happen, but I've come to believe they are actually quite rare. Something is at work, okay? Somewhere in the universe (or behind it), a great machine is ticking and turning its fabulous gears.

When Stephen King elaborated on his inspirations for his novel Carrie he draws from a time when he was a young man, and describes his impression when he came upon a statue of Christ on the cross, hanging there in misery, and he thought If THAT guy ever came back, he probably wouldn't be in a saving mood.

It was how wars really ended, Dieffenbaker supposed -- not at truce tables but in cancer wards and office cafeterias and traffic jams. Wars died one tiny piece at a time, each piece something that fell like a memory, each lost like an echo that fades in winding hills. In the end even war ran up the white flag. Or so he hoped. He hoped that in the end even war surrendered.

People can be stunningly unobservant.

Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent. Any parent with a hard hand can crush it, but to nurture it is much more difficult.

And, of course, one of the great true facts of the world is this: for every old-timer who dies, there's a new old-timer coming along. And a good story never dies; it is always passed down.

How does it happen that a writer who's not even very good - and I can say that, I've read four or five of his books - gets to be in charge of the world's destiny? Or of the entire universe's? If he's not very good, why didn't you stop at one? Mrs. Tassenbaum smiled. Touché. He is readable, I'll give him that - tells a good story...

Do the day and let the day do you.

Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts' deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead.

So what, ghosts can't hurt you. That's what I thought then.

Life's simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook.

It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a tremendous cost.

Something else I want you to know: how glad I am, Constant Reader, that we're both still here. Cool, isn't it?

And sometimes before I went to sleep I'd think: This is how, this is how you pay off bein' a bitch. And it ain't no use sayin' if you haven't been a bitch you wouldn't have had to pay. Because sometimes the world makes you be a bitch.When it's all doom and dark outside and only you inside to first make a light and then tend it, you have to be a bitch.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

We're only as sick as our secrets.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the tools to write.

In the end we always wear out our worries. That's what Wireman says.

Guys, gals, now hear this: No one wants to take away your hunting rifles. No one wants to take away your shotguns. No one wants to take away your revolvers, and no one wants to take away your automatic pistols, as long as said pistols hold no more than ten rounds. If you can't kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range.

Want to know the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There's no feeling on earth like it.

Women are better at keeping secrets, but men are more comfortable with them

Dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust...

A lot of folks, they got a little bit of shine to them. They don't even know it. But they always seem to show up with flowers when their wives are feelin blue with the monthlies, they do good on school tests they don't even study for, they got a good idea how people are feelin as soon as they walk into a room.

Some werewolves are hairy on the inside.