Quotes from Stephen King

A boy does not need a father unless he is a good father, but a good father is indispensable.

To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist.

Time, Eddie had decided during this period, was in large part created by external events. When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And when everything stopped happening, time apparently quit altogether. Just packed up and went to Coney Island. Weird but true.

Clay said, If they have flashlights like us, we can almost assume- We can't assume anything, [Alice] said restlessly, querulously. My father says assume makes an ass out of you and me. Get it, u and- I get it, Clay said.

You could feel weight, yes—when you were carrying too much, it made you ploddy—but wasn't it, like time, basically just a human construct? Hands on a clock, numbers on a bathroom scale, weren't they only ways of trying to measure invisible forces that had visible effects? A feeble effort to corral some greater reality beyond what mere humans thought of as reality?

I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored. They call it NeverLand or The Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few - like Scott - harness their dreams and turn them into horses.

I thought of telling him I didn't know about reasons, only about chains—how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you're lucky. Fucking strangled, if you're not.

My old resentments were mostly gone, but not entirely. Fright and loss leave a residue.

He felt as if someone had reached into his chest and cut off a tiny piece of his heart and made him eat it. His heart tasted very bitter to him, and he hated Peter more than ever, although part of him still loved his handsome older brother and always would. And although the taste had been bitter, he had liked it.Because it was his heart.

I want to suggest that to write to your best abilities, it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.

I worry about you Bev. I worry a lot.

Free at last, he thought. Great God Almighty, I'm free at last. Then: I believe this is redemption. And it's good, isn't it? Quite good, indeed.

People are only rational on the surface.

I'm a man of the world, and all that means is I understand what powers the world. The fuel mix is one part high-octane to nine parts pure bullshit.

Guys like Henry and his buddies were an accident waiting to happen; the little kids' version of floods or tornadoes or gallstones.

Money was no cure for sorrow, Alec reflected, but it did allow one to grieve in relative comfort.

Don't say things that invite sorrow

Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story.

Kindle, isn't it?" the waitress asked. "I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I'm reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult's books." "Oh, probably not all of them," Wesley said. "Huh? Why not?" "She's probably got another one done already. That's all I meant." "And James Patterson's probably written one since he got up this morning!" she said, and went off chortling.

Time-travelers lie a lot.

RIGHT HERE AND NOW, as an old friend used to say, we are in the fluid present, where clear-sightedness never guarantees perfect vision.

Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow.

Sometimes I think we'd all be better off if the people who mean well would just creep away and die.

Belief is a high hurdle to get over and I think it's even higher for smart people. Smart people know a lot, and maybe that makes them think they know everything.