Quotes from Stephen King

I'm going crazy, Louis thought wonderingly. Wheeeeee!

Magic would not work on Henry. He was too stupid.

In the end, we wear out our worries.

Hodges remembers an old saying: even on the darkest day, the sun shines on some dog's ass.

I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one's own pleasure, that fear may be mild — timidity is the word I've used here. If, however, one is working under deadline — a school paper, a newspaper article, the SAT writing sample — that fear may be intense.

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

That rational voice was right to be frightened. There's something in us that is very much attracted to madness. Everyone who looks off the edge of a tall building has felt a faint, morbid urge to jump.

Dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then. And that people who dream - or don't dream in a way they can often remember when they wake up - are mentally constipated in some way.

The truth is that most writers are needy.

But this wealth of information produced little or no insight.

There was an abyss. And books contained magical incantations to raise what was hidden there, all the great mysteries.

Being needed is a great thing. Maybe the great thing.

You don't have to live this way if you don't want to. You CAN, of course... but you don't have to.

Then they all began to sing. The tune was "Happy Birthday," but the lyrics had changed. "Something happened . . . TO YOU! Something happened . . . TO YOU! Something happened, dear Jamie, something happened TO YOU!" That was when I began to scream.

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

Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.

On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don't know if it's true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.

I've spread my legs in the backseat in a creative sense quite a few times.

The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs.

Luck was a joke. Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.

I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.

I don't think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them.

Do you believe in an afterlife? the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate. Brown nodded. I think this is it.

A great whispering noise began to rise in the woods on either side of the tracks, as if the forest had just noticed we were there and was commenting on it.