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.
“The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.”
“He supposed he was fascinated by that commonplace sense of history that anyone can feel glancing through the fresh news of ten or twenty years ago.”
“Un, ja arī burvība bija, tā nebija dievišķas izcelsmes, bet gan pagāniska.”
“Patiesa nožēla ir tikpat reti sastopama kā patiesa mīlestība.”
“Taču gandrīz neviens nekad nesaprot, ka viņa rīcība patiesi sāpina citus cilvēkus! Cilvēki nekļūst labāki, tikai gudrāki. Tad, kad kļūsti gudrāks, tu jau nepārtrauc raut nost mušām spārnus, tu tikai atrodi tam labāku attaisnojumu”
“With no gods to pray to, Susan prayed to her father.”
“Il tempo è come una serratura, pensò mentre contemplava le stelle. Sì, credo proprio di sì. Ogni tanto noi ci chiniamo e sbirciamo attraverso il buco. E quando lo facciamo, il vento che sentiamo sulle guance, il vento che soffia attraverso la toppa, è il respiro di tutto l'universo vivente.”
“I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.”
“Your Plan and the stuff that comes out of my asshole bear a suspicious resemblance to each other.”
“All I'm focusing on is pickin' 'em up and layin' 'em down.”
“When I look back on that time, it’s with the strangest stew of emotions: love, longing, terror, horror, regret, and the deep sweetness only those who’ve been near death can know. I think it’s how Adam and Eve must have felt. Surely they looked back at Eden, don’t you think, as they started barefoot down the path to where we are now, in our glum political world of bullets and bombs and satellite TV? Looked past the angel guarding the shut gate with his fiery sword? Sure. I think they must have wanted one more look at the green world they had lost, with its sweet water and kind-hearted animals. And its snake, of course.”
“If there's to be damnation, she had said, let it be of my choosing, not theirs. He knew a little about damnation himself… and he had an idea that the lessons, far from being done, were just beginning.”
“Black as night and as beautiful as forever.”
“Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped.”
“Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka.”
“Are you a gunslinger, Roland? If you are, you better get ready.”
“Time belongs to the Tower.”
“One rule of the road not directly stated elsewhere in this book: 'The editor is always right.' The corollary is that no writer will take all of his or her editor’s advice; for all have sinned and fallen short of editorial perfection.”
“Louis volvió a Bangor por el puente Chamberlain y se instaló en el motel Howard Johnson, en la carretera de Odlin, cerca del aeropuerto y del cementerio Pleasantview donde estaba enterrado su hijo. Se inscribió con el nombre de Dee Dee Ramone y pagó en efectivo.”
“Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.”
“I couldn't help it, boss, he said. I tried to take it back but it was too late.”
“You saved Hal's wife, why not my wife? Why not Janice? WHY NOT MY JANICE?”
“There’s an idea that hell is other people. My idea is that it might be repetition.”
“I've become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small town obscurity because that's the way they like it.”
“With six weeks' worth of recuperation time, you'll also be able to see any glaring holes in the plot or character development. And listen--if you spot a few of these big holes, you are forbidden to feel depressed about them or to beat up on yourself. Screw-ups happen to the best of us.”
“He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.”
“When you need Stayfree MaxiPads to absorb the expectorants produced by your insulted body, you are in serious fucking trouble.”
“Kill your darlings.”
“Down the hall I could hear the thud of basketballs, the blare of the time-out horn, and the shouts of the crowd as the sports-beasts fought: Lisbon Greyhounds versus Jay Tigers.Who can know when life hangs in the balance, or why?”
“But they wrote like little old men and little old ladies, all purseymouthed and ooo, don't slip on that icy patch, Mildred.”
“She's held onto her sobriety better than she held into her husband.”
“If you turned in a paper with writing on it, you were guaranteed a hook from Jake Epping of the LHS English Department, and if the writing was organized into actual paragraphs, you got at least a B-minus.”
“It was strange how some of childhood's words and ways fell at the wayside and were left behind, while others clamped tight and rode for life, growing the heavier to carry as time passed.”
“Any dedicated moon-watcher will know that, regardless of the year, I have taken a good many liberties with the lunar cycle-usually to take advantage of days (Valentine's, July 4th, etc.) which "mark" certain months in our minds. 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.”
“Time was a face on the water, and like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.”
“The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.”
“I the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all.”
“You're good for the ones you love. You WANT to be good for the ones you love. Because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.”
“There was power in that music, a power which seemed to most rightfully belong to all the skinny kids, fat kids, ugly kids, shy kids—the world's losers, in short.”
“There will be water if God wills it.”
“Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall.”
“Love among the ruins... I'll tell you something, my friend: Weird love's better than no love at all.”
“As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read the scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term.”
“I finali sono senza cuore.Finale è solo un sinonimo di addio.”
“I’ll be back as quick as I can,” I said awkwardly.“Sure.”“Stay cool.”“Don’t worry, I’m not going to punch anybody.”I trotted to my car. As I slipped behind the wheel I heard the little girl ask Arnie loudly, “Why is your face all messy like that, mister?”
“The sun had burned through and the day had gone from dull to dazzling, yet in the west blask-satin thunderheads continued to stack up. It was as if night has burst a blood-vessel in the sky over there.”
“It's just that I take riddling seriously. I was taught that the ability to solve them indicates a sane and rational mind.”
“A man with a good wife is the luckiest of God's creatures...”
“What you write down sometimes leaves you forever, like old photographs left in the bright sun, fading to nothing but white. I pray for that sort of release.”
“Writing's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”