Stephen King quotes

“I'm still in love with what I do, with the idea of making things up, so hours when I write always feel like very blessed hours to me.”

— Stephen King

“Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.”

— Stephen King

“Let's face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.”

— Stephen King

“I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”

— Stephen King

“I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.”

— Stephen King

“I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.”

— Stephen King

“This is not a bad life.”

— Stephen King

“But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do. He had a massive stroke. He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation's equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on?”

— Stephen King

“No, it's not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.”

— Stephen King

“We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based.”

— Stephen King

“I don't want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.”

— Stephen King

“It's a mystery. That's the first thing that interests me about the idea of God. If there is one, it's mysterious and powerful and awesome to even consider the concept, and you have to take it seriously.”

— Stephen King

“I had a period where I thought I might not be good enough to publish.”

— Stephen King

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

— Stephen King

“Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.”

— Stephen King

“You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.”

— Stephen King

“I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.”

— Stephen King

“Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.”

— Stephen King

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet.”

— Stephen King

“What charitable 1 percenters can't do is assume responsibility - America's national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.”

— Stephen King

“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”

— Stephen King

“But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.”

— Stephen King

“We're news junkies in my house.”

— Stephen King

“Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you're forced back on your own imagination.”

— Stephen King

“I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.”

— Stephen King

“After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.”

— Stephen King

“Well, I'm like a drug addict, I'm always saying I'm going to stop, and then I don't, what I've said consistently is that I hope I know when to stop: when it starts to get repetitive.”

— Stephen King

“In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.”

— Stephen King

“We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.”

— Stephen King

“You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.”

— Stephen King