Stephen King Quotes (302 Quotes)

They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.

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.

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

The soil of a manÆs heart is stonier; a man grows what he can and tends it.

Things were going very fast now. Too fast to suit him. Fantasy and reality had merged.

The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high... but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.

Sometimes the embers are better than the campfire.

I don't like people. They fuck me up.

Was there ever a trap to match the trap of love?

Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.

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

Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.

At Hartford or New Haven or one of those other places where no one in their right fucking mind would want to live.

Whenever anything happens in America, they have to gold-plate it, like baby shoes. That way you can forget it.

Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don't be like the book snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words - the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

He reached out with one bird-claw hand. He closed it around my wrist and I could feel the hot cancer that was loose and raving through his body, eating anything and everything left that was still good to eat.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

We either learn to accept or we end up writing letters home with crayons.

To his way of thinking, the only thing more natural than death was sex.

They said it was going fine and gave him those dazed, fuck-struck smiles of which only newlyweds are capable.

Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.

It had been no struggle to turn his face to the south and leave it behind - but it had hurt his heart.

You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them.

What Jack didn't understand was that no matter where he went, the same asshole got off the plane.

He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor.

Superstition, like true love, needs time to grow and reflect upon itself.

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

But in high school the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heared clearly in the dreams of later years.

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

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts

What can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.

What's been tried once had been tried once before... and before... and before...

A coward judges all he sees by what he is.

Think what you will, blackbird, for I'll be here long after thee's gone they course and died thy death.

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

Long days and pleasant nights.

And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night... and what your dreams are like.

You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.

HEY, BOBBY TERRY, YOU SCROOOOWED IT UP!

That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.

Get on before I blow you lose of your shoes and give your fathers cause to celebrate!

It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.

There are also books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby. Don't be like the book snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words-the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.-Mr. Brautigan says to Bobby.

Her hands twisted restlessly together like a pair of pink and hairless animals at play.

You could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than from your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go… well, anywhere at all.

You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.

A man who can't bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.

What I'd show you is much more bizarre than anything we have looked at so far, and I warn you in advance that the first impulse will be to laugh. That's all right. Laugh if you must. Just don't take your eye off what you see, for even in your imagination, here is a creature who can do you damage.

Weird love's better than no love at all.