Stephen King
Teddy, Vern, Chris: I don't shut up. I grow up. And when I look at you, I throw up. Aghhh! Gordie: And then your mom goes around the corner and she licks it up.Collection: Mom
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.Collection: About Writing
Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.Collection: About Books And Reading
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.Collection: About Writing
The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.Collection: Trust
The most important things are the hardest to say.Collection: Important
It’s a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.Collection: Memories
If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?Collection: Passion
Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows underneath the armor.Collection: Sarcastic
I’m most afraid of losing my mind. You lose your identity, your sense of who you are, where you are.Collection: Mind
Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.Collection: Lonely
Reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren’t prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.Collection: Reading
First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.-Roland Deschain, of Gilead.Collection: Firsts
But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.Collection: Stories
Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.Collection: Fun
The first draft of a book – even a long one – should take no more than three months, the length of a season.Collection: Book
There’s nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.Collection: Stories
Constant reading will pull you into a place – a mind-set, if you like the phrase – where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.Collection: Reading
Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story’s just a story.Collection: Stories
Everything’s a lot tougher when it’s for real. That’s when you choke. When it’s for real.Collection: Real
I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Firsts
The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.Collection: Real
And in real life endings aren’t always neat, whether they’re happy endings, or whether they’re sad endings.Collection: Real
Remember that ‘plumber in space’ is not such a bad setup for a story.Collection: Stories
As we get older, our fears, in some way, sharpen and become more personal, because we can no longer – let’s say take a book like “It” or maybe “Christine,” and say these are make-believe fears.Collection: Book