Stephen King Quotes

Stephen King is known for his powerful quotes on life, fear, and the craft of writing.

 

Here are some of the most famous and insightful Stephen King quotes, categorized by theme:

Stephen King Quotes On Life, Hope, and Humanity

"Get busy living, or get busy dying." — The Shawshank Redemption

"Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." — The Shawshank Redemption

"The most important things are the hardest things to say." — Different Seasons

"Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always comes around to where you started again." — Different Seasons

"Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty." — The Gunslinger

"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool." — Needful Things

Stephen King Quotes On Fear and Horror

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." — The Shining

"We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones." — Danse Macabre

"Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." — The Shawshank Redemption

"If a fear cannot be articulated, it can't be conquered." — 'Salem's Lot

Stephen King Quotes On Writing and Creativity

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

"Books are a uniquely portable magic." — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

"The scariest moment is always just before you start." — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

"Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings." — On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." — Danse Macabre

Stephen King Quotes about Love

"But I believe in love, you know; love is a uniquely portable magic. I don't think it's in the stars, but I do believe that blood calls to blood and mind calls to mind and heart to heart." — 11/22/63

"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." — Lisey's Story

"Love is what moves the world, I've always thought...it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down, bring them low...and make them crawl." — The Stand

"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." — Bag of Bones

"I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between." — Lisey's Story

"If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I'll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it's yours." — 11/22/63

"Love isn't soft, like the poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close." — Dolores Claiborne

"Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn't grow very well in a place where it was always dark." — The Stand

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish your feelings... The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried." — The Body (Different Seasons)

"True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring — once the tale of encounter and discovery is told... As is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous." — The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

Carrie Quotes

"People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it."

"Hardly anybody ever finds out that their actions really, actually, hurt other people!"

"High school isn't a very important place. When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great unless they're beered up."

"The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy."

"Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball... True sorrow is as rare as true love."

"Jesus watches from the wall, but his face is cold as stone, and if he loves me as she tells me, why do I feel so all alone?" (A line from a poem written by Carrie White.)

"She did not know if her gift came from the lord of light or of darkness, and now, finally finding that she didn't care which, she was overcome with almost indescribable relief, as if a huge weight, long carried, had slipped from her shoulders."

"God had turned His face away, and why not? This horror was as much His doing as hers."

"Mind over matter in any form is a terrific drain on the body's resources." (Referring to the mental cost of using telekinesis.)

"And then the world exploded." (A stark summary of the chaos she unleashes.)

"This is the girl they keep calling a monster. I want you to keep that firmly in mind. The girl who could be satisfied with a hamburger and a dime root beer after her only school dance so her momma wouldn't be worried..."

The Stand Quotes

"Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. 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." (A classic passage from Glen Bateman reflecting on the struggle to build a new civilization.)

"If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness."

"People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad."

"Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it."

"No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't."

"The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet."

"Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn't grow very well in a place where it was always dark."

"In his heart, hope—that indestructible weed of the human heart—had begun to bloom again."

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window."

"There's always a choice. That's God's way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There's no set of leg-irons on you. But this is what God wants of you."

IT Quotes

“I’m every nightmare you’ve ever had. I’m your worst dream come true. I’m everything you ever were afraid of.” (A line from It, the creature.)

"They float. They float. They float. Right down here, George. Everything floats down here." (Pennywise the Clown to Georgie Denbrough.)

“Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring.”

“This isn't real enough for you, Billy? I'm not real enough for you?” (The creature taunting Bill Denbrough.)

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them... The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried.” (A beautiful quote about the difficulty of expressing deep emotion.)

“What can be done when you’re eleven can often never be done again.” (A reflection on the unique power and vulnerability of childhood.)

“Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.” (Eddie Kaspbrak's realization about returning to Derry.)

“The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you.” (Richie Tozier reflecting on the loss of childhood energy and imagination.)

“And almost idly, in a kind of side-thought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood’s great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”

“Maybe, he thought, there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends—maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be.”

“Be true, be brave, stand.” (A powerful mantra of the Losers' Club.)

“Swear to me. Swear to me that if it isn’t dead, you’ll all come back.” (Bill Denbrough instigating their timeless pact.)

The Body Quotes

"The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out."

"But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away."

"That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?" (The iconic concluding line of the story.)

"Love isn't soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close."

"Speech destroys the function of love, I think... The word is the harm."

"Your friends drag you down, Gordie. Don't you know that? They're like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can't save them. You can only drown with them." (Chris Chambers expressing a darker, painful view of their trapped lives.)

"And I wonder if there is really any point to what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing 'let's pretend.' "

"The only two useful art forms are religion and stories."

"Life's a gyp, you know it? I mean, look at us." (Chris Chambers' bleak assessment of their destinies in Castle Rock.) 

The Dead Zone Quotes

“The Question was this: If you could jump into a time machine and go back to 1932, would you kill Hitler?” (The thought experiment that forces Johnny to confront his own role in potentially changing the future.)

“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.” (A quote about making peace with one's limitations and efforts.)

"Some things were better lost than found." (Reflecting on the painful nature of Johnny's abilities.)

“PRECOGNITION, TELEPATHY, BULLSHIT! EAT MY DONG, YOU EXTRASENSORY TURKEY!” (A furious, humorous line from a hate letter Johnny receives, showcasing the public's skeptical and extreme reactions to him.)

“Nothing is ever lost, Sarah. Nothing that can't be found.” (A poignant line, though the novel ultimately complicates whether everything should be found.)

"The possibility of... of altering the outcome of your premonitions. It's fascinating. Let me make a note." (Dr. Weizak's realization that the "dead zone"—the blank spot in Johnny's vision—represents the chance for a future to be changed.)

“I’m a man of the world, and all that means is I understand what powers the world. The fuel mix is one part high-octane to nine parts pure bullshit.” (A character reflecting on the necessary deception in public life.)

“It's been my experience that ninety-five percent of the people who walk the earth are simply inert, Johnny. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are the people who do what they say they can do.” (A dark assessment of human drive and inaction.)