Stephen King

It doesnt have to be the last good time. But sooner or later the last good time would come around. It does for all of us.

Good books dont give up all their secrets at once.

I've always believed in God. I also think that's the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you're in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.

The man in black travels with your soul in his pocket.

This is not a bad life.

Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years.

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

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Hurts a reason to change but all the hurt in the world dont change facts.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

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

You needn't die happy when your time comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from the beginning to the end.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own.

Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.

It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.

The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.

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

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "one word at a time."

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.

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

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.

Bad chances were better than no chances.

Love, the simplest, strongest, and most unforgiving of all emotions.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

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

See the turtle of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth. If you want to run and play, come along the beam today.

We're news junkies in my house.

Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

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

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off."

You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride “if responsibility robs him of his manhood.

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?

It's a tough life if you don't weaken.

Its dialogue that gives your cast their voices and is crucial in defining their characters.

How many have to die before we will give up these dangerous toys

The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of.

I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy.

City life is no life for a country man for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.

Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we're children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they're scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it's pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

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

Either get busy living or get busy dying.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

Talent is never static. It's always growing or dying.

Madness is a kind of mental suicide.

The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.

The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to any citizenry is simple loyalty.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Panic is highly contagious, especially in situations when nothing is known and everything is in flux.

When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'

If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.

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

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

Monsters are real and ghosts are real too. They live inside us and sometimes they win.

Hairstyles change and skirt lengths and slang but high school administrations Never.

Books are the perfect entertainment no commercials no batteries hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesnt carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.

Lets face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.

What really scares me is Alzheimer's or premature senility, losing that ability to read and enjoy and to write. And you do it, and some days maybe aren't so good, and then some days, you really catch a wave, and it's as good as it ever was.

The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.

You can't be careful on a skateboard.

Small towns harbor small imaginations.

We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.

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.

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.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn't very interesting.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, 'Why god? Why me?' and the thundering voice of God answered, 'There's just something about you that pisses me off.'

If you have given up your heart ... you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature and a loveless creature is a beast.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride if responsibility robs him of his manhood.

The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.

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

The scholar's greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.

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.

Life is fair. We all get the same nine month shake in the box and then the dice roll. Some people get a run of sevens. Some people unfortunately get snake eyes. Its just how the world is.

The late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood

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.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

The brain is a muscle that can move the world.

If you don’t control your temper. Your temper will control you.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a coincidence is just a coincidence.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a storys just a story.

And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful staring unrelenting sanity.

Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.

Beating heroin is childs play compared to beating your childhood.

Relief loosens tongues beyond measure.

No one ever forgets a toy that made him or her supremely happy as a child, even if that toy is replaced by one like it that is much nicer.

If I kept saying it; if I kept reaching out. My accident really taught me just one thing: the only way to go on is to go on. To say ‘I can do this’ even when you know you can’t.

A slice of pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings - words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Its only kids in high school who are convinced theyre never going to change. Theres always going to be a pep rally and theres always going to be a spectator bus somewhere out there in the future.