“Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.”

“by Annie Wilkes...If you can get into that chair all by yourself, Paul, she said at last, then I think you can fill in your f******* n's.She then closed the door and locked it again. Paul sat looking at it for a long time, almost as if there was something to see. He was too flabberghasted to do anything else.”

“I want to make you laugh or cry when you read a story . . .or do both at the same time. I want your heart, in other words. If you want to learn something, go to school.”

“Those are the only to verbalizations usually that we make in movies—either to scream or to laugh—because those two reactions are rather close. Most things we laugh at are things that are really horrible, when you think about them. It’s funny and you don’t scream, as long as it’s not you. If it’s somebody else you can laugh.”

“And, you know, I hope you have some fun with this book. Nosh and nibble at the corners or read the mother straight through, but enjoy. That's what it's for, as much as any of the novels. Maybe there will be something here to make you think or make you laugh or just make you mad. Any of those reactions would please me. Boredom, however, would be a bummer.”

“I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.”

“What if I fall?', Tim cried.Maerlyn laughed. 'Sooner or later, we all do.”