Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
“As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light.As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.”
“But there are weak men who can lift cars if their wives are pinned underneath. The brain, Garraty." McVries's voice had dropped to a hoarse whisper. "It isn’t man or God. It’s something...in the brain.”
“The crowd could not know that they were cheering but somehow they did, somehow they understood that the circle between death-worship and death-wish had been completed for another year and the crowd went completely loopy, convulsing itself in greater and greater paroxysms.”
“Sometimes loving eyes don't see what they don't want to see.”
“...stupidity is one of the two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances.”
“If you've ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you'll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be.”
“We either learn to accept or we end up writing letters home with crayons.”
“There is nothing of God or Light in that heartless sound - it is all black winter and dark ice.”
“To those readers who feel that I didn't know any better, I assert that I did ... but the temptation was simply too great to resist.”
“There's a Reason Cell Rhymes with Hell”
“Membacalah empat jam sehari dan menulislah empat jam sehari. Kalau kau tidak bisa meluangkan waktu untuk itu, jangan harap kau bisa menjadi penulis yang baik.”
“My girl has got a bun in her oven, and I guess you know who did the damn cooking.”
“Whatever!”
“In here I'm the guy who can get things for you... outside all you need is the Yellow Pages. I don't think I could make it.”
“I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.”
“I'm not laughing at you guys," King said. "It's actually against my religion to laugh at men who are toting guns.”
“You know," King said, "I'm not much good at telling stories. That sounds like a paradox, but it's not; it's the reason I write them down.”
“The gunslinger said, "I used to think the most terrible thing would be to reach the Dark Tower and find the top room empty. The God of all universes either dead or nonexistent in the first place. But now...suppose there is someone there, Eddie? Someone in charge who turns out to be..." He couldn't finish.Eddie could. "Someone who turns out to be just another bumhug? Is that it? God not dead but feeble-minded and malicious?”
“You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.”
“All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew.”
“I hold to no God," Roland said. "I hold to the Tower, and won't pray to that.”
“Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.”
“Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”
“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”
“Get busy living or get busy dying.....there ain't nothing inbetween”
“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”
“No Fuimus, non Sumus, atque nonquam obliti erimus.""I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.I aim with my eye.I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.I shoot with my mind.I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.I kill with my heart.""Blaine is a pain.""Redrum......""MISERY IS ALIVE, MISERY IS ALIVE! OH, This whole house is going to be full of romance, OOOH, I AM GOING TO PUT ON MY LIBERACE RECORDS!""First the blood comes, then the boys follow.""Blood stains are the hardest to get out."Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
“Can a mordern city burn,' he asked Tom. 'One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?”
“If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.”
“Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.”
“Shortly after, the aqueous symphony of dawn began. The last day of the Walk came up wet and overcast. The wind howled down the almost-empty alley of the road like a lost dog being whipped through a strange and terrible place.”
“They stared at each other uneasily and bunched closer together like small boys in a lightning storm or cows in a blizzard. There was a raw redness in that swelling sound of Crowd. A hunger that was numbing. Garraty had a vivid and scary image of the great god Crowd clawing its way out of the Augusta basin on scarlet spider-legs and devouring them all alive.”
“The two of them walked toward the road and the stone marker. Behind them, other cars were pulling out. A woman began screaming abruptly. Unconsciously, Garraty and McVries drew closer together. Neither of them looked back. Ahead of them was the road, wide and black.”
“Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard.”
“In the end, though, it's all about giving back the teeth that the current 'sweetie-vamp' craze has, by and large, stolen from the bloodsuckers. It's about making them scary again.”
“Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.”
“It’s not supposed to end this way. Whatever else Roland and his ka-tet knows, that’s one thing that they ken for sure. This business ain’t supposed to end, and end bloody, at the base of some godforsaken pile of rock called Jericho Hill. Because John Farson is evil, and they’re good, and good may have its setbacks and bumps along the road, but when the final bell gongs, only good is left to hear its peals. They know that. They just…they know it. This ain’t how it’s gonna end. ‘Cept, deep down…they know it is.”
“he sat upon his throne, which is made of skulls...”
“I guess Faulkner never would have written anything like this, huh? Oh, well.”
“The soil of a man's heart is stonier [...] A man grows what he can... and he tends it" - Jud Crandall, Chapter 22 (near end) Pet Sematary”
“Sometimes, dead is bettah" - Jud Crandall, Pet Sematary”
“It's best to be ruthless with the past.”
“Any good marriage is secret territory, a necessary white space on society’s map. What others don’t know about it is what makes it yours.”
“As soon as you have a child, you see your own tombstone”
“At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens as all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago.”
“If you can't laugh when things go bad--laugh and put on a little carnival--then you're either dead or wishing you were.”
“Maybe Shooter was a writer. He fulfilled both of the main requirements: he told a tale you wanted to hear to the end, even if you had a pretty good idea what the end was going to be, and he was so full of shit he squeaked. ”
“What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common....”
“Sometimes dead is better”
“The monster nevers dies.”