Stephen King Quotes (302 Quotes)

The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.

Good books are for consideration after, too.

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.

The first real terror struck him then, and there was nothing supernatural about it. It was only a realization of how easy it was to trash your life. That was what was so scary. You just dragged the fan up to everything you had spent the years raking together and turned the motherfucker on.

Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That's what makes them children.

The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king.

Remember in elementary school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file from smallest to tallest? What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?

Of course they had more chains on him than Scrooge saw on Marley's ghost, but he could have kicked up dickens if he'd wanted. That's a pun, son.

Go then, there are other worlds than these.

They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.

Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston.

She couldn't be on his wavelength all the time. That's all. When you could recognize that and deal with it, you were on your way to an adult relationship.

Looking back on it, Sloat wasn't sure how he had tolerated Phil Sawyer for as long as he had. His partner had never played to win, not seriously; he had been encumbered by sentimental notions of loyalty and honor, corrupted by the stuff you told kids to get them halfway civilized before you finally tore the blindfold off their eyes.

They are surprised that he did it, though, which shows you that the male mind expects very little in the way of altruism from it's fellows.

Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.

Everything's a lot tougher when it's for real. That's when you choke. When it's for real.

The sun was a molten coin burning a circle in the low-hanging overcast, surrounded by a fairy-ring of moisture.

The silence was a comfortable one, as if they had known each other for a long time. This was a feeling about which Louis had read in books, but which he had never experienced until now.

There were fourteen steps exactly fourteen. But the top one was smaller, out of proportion, as if it had been added to avoid the evil number.

Roland had taught him that self-deception was nothing but pride in disguise, an indulgence to be denied.

On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That it was my job? My job?

He was one of those quite rare adults who communicate with small children fairly well and who love them all impartially--not in a sugary way but in a businesslike fashion that may sometimes entail a hug, in the same way that closing a big business deal may call for a handshake.

They were close to the end of the beginning . . .

This inhuman place makes human monsters.

He could feel the pores of his body open like a million mouths and slurp the water in like a sponge.

She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin around this here bush and get your old ass in gear.

When he remembered to turn and look for it, the Talisman was gone.

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.