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.
“History doesn't repeat itself, but it harmonizes, and what it usually makes is the devil's music.”
“In case you didn't know it, friend, the Weather Bureau can post tornado warnings, but when it comes to telling exactly when and where they'll touch down, they don't know fuck-all.”
“There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.”
“Mis libros son el equivalente literario a un Big Mac con una gran ración de patatas fritas.”
“I think of John saying thatWharton killed the Detterick twins with their love for each other, and that it happens every day, all overthe world. If it happens, God lets it happen, and when we say "I don't understand," God replies, "I don'tcare.”
“A woman's love is strange and cruel and nearly always clear-sighted, love that sees is always horrible love, and she knew walking away was right and so she walked, dismissing the cries as only another part of the boy's development, like smiles from gas or scraped knees.”
“Hey, Trash, what did old lady Semple say when you torched her pension check?”
“Abrakadabra, und alles verwandelt sich in einen großen Haufen Scheiße.”
“Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.”
“Sour cream! He had tasted it once and liked to puke.”
“It's the pool where we all go down to drink, to swim, to catch a little fish from the edge of the shore; it's also the pool where some hardy souls go out in their flimsy wooden boats after the big ones. It is the pool of life, the cup of imagination, and she has an idea that different people see different versions of it, but with two things ever in common: it's always about a mile deep in the Fairy Forest, and it's always sad. Because imagination isn't the only thing this place is about.”
“By committing suicide, Al had taken away the scholar's greatest weakness: calling hesitation research.”
“I used to work for this guy before I came here...He used to tell me that ‘never’ is the word God listens for when he needs a laugh.”
“Leave it at this: man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that get in his way.”
“Some guys-- a lot of guys---don't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they eat or drink or think or believe. Me, I don't believe in God. But if I saw him, I would. I wouldn't just go around saying 'Jesus, that was a great special effect.' The definition of an asshole is a guy who doesn't believe what he's seeing. And you can quote me.”
“I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you have to say something, and it plays better if it’s something at least half-clever. Also, I didn’t want to sound like a workaholic dweeb (just a workaholic, I guess). The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday (at my age you try to ignore your goddam birthday anyway). And when I’m not working, I’m not working at all, although during those periods of full stop I usually feel at loose ends with myself and have trouble sleeping. For me, not working is the real work.”
“Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind – they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death.”
“Un'idea è come un germe del raffreddore: prima o poi finisce che qualcuno lo prende.”
“It's just that I was thinking you don't ride in that truck of yours, you wear it.”
“If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the tools to write.”
“Adults are the real monsters.”
“What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Everything in the Universe denies 'nothing'. To suggest an ending is the one absurdity" -The Man in Black from Stephen King's The Gunslinger”
“No bounce, no play.”
“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.”
“My heart's with you, Bill, no matter how it turns out. My heart is with all of them, and I think that, even if we forget each other, we'll remember in our dreams.”
“We all float down here Timmy”
“In many ways the world is nothing but a pile of shit. But it can also be very beautiful.”
“I don't know if a little tickle of psychic ability means we are divine; there are plenty of people who can accept the miracle of eyesight without believing that eyesight proves the existence of God...”
“My own gut feeling is that everyone's psychic...and it's so ingrained a part of us that we very rarely notice it. The talent may be largely preventative, and that keeps it from being noticed, too.”
“The technological society has walked off the court, so to speak, but they've left all the basketballs behind. Someone will come along who remembers the game and teach it to the rest again.”
“...in this world He's apt to repay service with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars.”
“But nothin lasts, I guess. Only the love of the Lord.”
“Prophecy is the gift of God and everyone has a smidge of it.”
“The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs.”
“Later on in life, you might wish that the good things which all befall in your one special year had spread themselves out a little more.”
“The little ones are the only good human beings.”
“At first Nick was able to divide this fantasy from reality, but as time passed, he became more sure that the fantasy was reality.”
“To Nick's mind, a corpse was just a thing, no different than a chair or typewriter or a rug. A corpse was just an inanimate thing which filled space.”
“Never before in his life had he understood how subjective, how plastic, time really is.”
“Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
“There's precious little reform in the human race.”
“Whatever lay ahead, he was glad to be alive.”
“When I bore you, just tell me to shut up, I won't be offended.''I like to listen,' Stu said.'Then you are one of God's chosen. Let's go.”
“I've always been able to say what I meant! It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone, so why can't I saw what it feels like?”
“In scenes like these, any man could be Iago.”
“They said the stock market crashed, or something, but since I'm deaf I didn't hear it (ha-ha).”
“I know what you mean, jellybean.”
“...if a person doesn't know they're hurting, why, maybe they're not. I was wrong.”
“I always told myself I didn't do it because I don't hold with hitting women. I still don't. But when a person-man or woman-turns into a dog and begins to bite, someone has to shy it off.”
“You went away a little boy in a man's body and you came back the same way, except the man got his hair processed.”