Stephen King

“I discovered news of old horrors in old books; read intelligence of old atrocities in old periodicals; always in the back of my mind, every day a bit louder, I heard the seashell drone of some growing, coalescing force; I seemed to smell the bitter ozone aroma of lightings-to-come.”

“stop now before i kill youa word to the wise from your friendPENNYWISE ”

“Writers were blessed stenographers taking divine dictation.”

“remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.”

“When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.”

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

“Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.”

“In the end it was Tabby who cast the deciding vote, as she so often has at crucial moments in my life. I'd like to think I've done the same for her from time to time, because it seems to me that one of the things marriage is about is casting the tiebreaking vote when you just can't decide what you should do next.”

“If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.”

“Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

“It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.”

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”

“There were times . . . when it occurred to me that I was repeating my mother's life. Usually this thought struck me as funny. But if I happened to be tired, or if there were extra bills to pay and no money to pay them with, it seemed awful. I'd think 'This isn't the way our lives are supposed to be going.' Then I'd think 'Half the world has the same idea.”

“He was in that mostly empty-headed state of grace which is sometimes such fertile soil ; it's the ground from which our brightest dreams and biggest ideas (both good and spectacularly bad) suddenly burst forth, often full-blown.”

“Friends come in and out of our lives, like busboys in a restaurant.”

“It'll be your damnation, boy. You'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your way to hell.”

“And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.”

“What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's neveer a good sign.”

“They said it was going fine and gave him those dazed, fuck-struck smiles of which only newlyweds are capable.”

“Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.”

“She knew with suddeness and ease that this moment would be with her always, within hand's reach of memory.She doubted if they all sensed it - they had seen the world - but even George was silent for a minute as they looked, and the scene, the smell, even the sound of the band playing a faintly recognisable movie theme, was locked forever in her, and she was at peace.”

“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.”

“The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied.”

“I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.”

“A friend came to visit James Joyce one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair.James, what’s wrong?' the friend asked. 'Is it the work?'Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at his friend. Of course it was the work; isn’t it always?How many words did you get today?' the friend pursued.Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk): 'Seven.'Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.'Yes,' Joyce said, finally looking up. 'I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in!”

“Later, going home, I realized they didn't look alike at all; what made them seem to was the aftermath of stress and the lingering of sorrow. It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.”

“Read a lot, write a lot is the great commandment.”

“Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?”

“Sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight.”

“Everybody trusts a guy in a raincoat. I don't know why. It's just one of those mystery facts.”

“I have seen many cases like N. during the five years I've been in practice. I sometimes picture these unfortunates as men and women being pecked to death by predatory birds. The birds are invisible - at least until a psychiatrist who is good, or lucky, or both, sprays them with his version of Luminol and shines the right light on them - but they are nevertheless very real. The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands . . . and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.”

“What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger!" the man in black laughed.”

“Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me!”

“Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up”

“Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.”

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

“Case fuckin closed.”

“Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn't known dogs could scream.”

“French is the language that turns dirt into romance.”

“The only problem with him and Henry was they were like Charlie Brown and Lucy. The only difference was once in a while Henry would hold onto the football so Eddie could kick it--not often, but once in a while. Eddie had even thought, when in one of his heroin dazes, that he ought to write Charles Schultz a letter. Dear Mr. Schultz, he would say. You're missing a bet by ALWAYS having Lucy pull the football up at the last second. She ought to hold it down there once in a while. Nothing Charlie Brown could ever predict, you understand.Sometimes she'd maybe hold it down for him to kick three, even four times in a row, then nothing for a month, then once, and then nothing for three or four days, and then, you know, you get the idea. That would REALLY fuck the kid up, you know?”

“Bill could smell Its breath and it was a smell like exploded animals lying on the highway at midnight.”

“She looked from her son to Bill and back to her son again, touched by wonder that was mostly simple perplexity but partly a fear so thin and sharp that it found its way deep into her inner heart and vibrated there like a tuning-fork made of clear ice.”

“Your pimples are the Lord's way of chastising you. Now eat your pie.”

“[Prison Break is] one of the craziest, most unpredictable roller-coaster rides on TV today.”

“Think of those fingers as abilities. A creative person may write, paint, sculpt, or think up math formulae; he or she might dance or sing or play a musical instrument. Those are the fingers, but creativity is the hand that gives them life. & just as all hands are basically the same - form follows function - all creative people are the same once you get down to the place where the fingers join.”

“I haven't been thinking at all, not really, I've just been following the steps. The recipe. & this is like turning a page in the cookbook & finding the next one blank.”

“Luck was a joke. Even good luck was just bad luck with its hair combed.”

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one's papers and identification pretty much in order.”

“She can't help it,' he said. 'She's got the soul of a poet and the emotional makeup of a junkyard dog.”