WIST Quotations

King, Stephen -- “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (1982)

Dave — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 00:17:00 +0000

Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” (1982)

King, Stephen -- “Stephen King,” in N. Epel, ed. Writers Dreaming (1993)

Dave — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:38:01 +0000

Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I’m aware that I’m writing. I’m aware of my surroundings. It’s like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I’m able to see better.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
“Stephen King,” in N. Epel, ed. Writers Dreaming (1993)

King, Stephen -- “Stephen King’s Most Memorable Books of 2007,” Entertainment Weekly (21 Dec 2007)

Dave — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 06:08:03 +0000

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
“Stephen King’s Most Memorable Books of 2007,” Entertainment Weekly (21 Dec 2007)

King, Stephen -- Cell, “Gaiten Academy,” ch. 16 (2006)

Dave — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 03:10:29 +0000

What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the Earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Cell, “Gaiten Academy,” ch. 16 (2006)

King, Stephen -- Christine, Part 1, ch. 5 (1983)

Dave — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:10:31 +0000

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Christine, Part 1, ch. 5 (1983)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- Christine, Part 1, ch. 3 (1983)

Dave — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:27:46 +0000

Has it ever occurred to you … that parents are nothing but overgrown kids until their children drag them into adulthood? Usually kicking and screaming?

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Christine, Part 1, ch. 3 (1983)

King, Stephen -- Hearts in Atlantis (1999)

Dave — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:28:24 +0000

Hearts can break. Yes. Hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Hearts in Atlantis (1999)

King, Stephen -- Misery (1987)

Dave — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 04:58:32 +0000

In a book, all would have gone according to plan. … but life was so fucking untidy — what could you say for an existence where some of your most crucial conversations of your life took place when you needed to take a shit, or something? An existence where there weren’t even any chapters?

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Misery (1987)

King, Stephen -- Needful Things (1991)

Dave — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 23:57:08 +0000

The devil’s voice is sweet to hear

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Needful Things (1991)

King, Stephen -- Night Shift, Foreword (1978)

Dave — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:15:05 +0000

Fear makes us blind, and we touch each fear with all the avid curiosity of self-interest, trying to make a whole out of a hundred parts, like the blind men with their elephant.
We sense the shape. Children grasp it easily, forget it, and relearn it as adults. The shape is there, and most of us come to realize what it is sooner or later: it is the shape of a body under a sheet. All our fears add up to one great fear, all our fears are part of that great fear — an arm, a leg, a finger, an ear. We’re afraid of the body under the sheet. It’s our body. And the great appeal of horror fiction through the ages is that it serves as a rehearsal for our own deaths.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Night Shift, Foreword (1978)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- Night Shift, Foreword (1978)

Dave — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 14:47:34 +0000

The horror writer always brings bad news: you’re going to die, he says; he’s telling you to never mind Oral Roberts and his “something good is going to happen to you,” because something bad is also going to happen to you, and it may be cancer and it may be a stroke, and it may be a car accident, but it’s going to happen. And he takes your hand and he enfolds it in his own, and he takes you into the room and he puts your hands on the shape under the sheet … and tells you to touch it here … here … and here …

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Night Shift, Foreword (1978)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000)

Dave — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 04:58:52 +0000

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000)

King, Stephen -- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2001)

Dave — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 17:37:08 +0000

The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest. Life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour or so before closing time, and if you are buying.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2001)

King, Stephen -- On Writing (2000)

Dave — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 20:21:02 +0000

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. […] Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
On Writing (2000)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- On Writing, “Toolbox” (2000)

Dave — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:05:32 +0000

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day … fifty the day after that … and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it’s — GASP!! — too late.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
On Writing, “Toolbox” (2000)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- On Writing, ch. 12 (2000)

Dave — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 14:25:53 +0000

Mostly, when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggests cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do (kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings).

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
On Writing, ch. 12 (2000)
(Source)

See Leonard and Quiller-Couch.

King, Stephen -- Pet Sematary (1983)

Dave — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 23:54:56 +0000

It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls — as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything.

And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one’s sense of humor begins to reassert itself.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Pet Sematary (1983)

King, Stephen -- The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

Dave — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 03:29:36 +0000

She was a grown up now, and she discovered that being a grown up was not quite what she had suspected it would be when she was a child. She had thought then that she would make a conscious decision one day to simply put her toys and games and little make-believes away. Now she discovered that was not what happened at all. Instead, she discovered, interest simply faded. It became less and less and less, until a dust of years drew over the bright pleasures of childhood, and they were forgotten.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

King, Stephen -- The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

Dave — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 00:37:43 +0000

Did they live happily ever after? They did not. No one ever does, in spite of what the stories may say. They had their good days, as you do, and they had their bad days, and you know about those. They had their victories, as you do, and they had their defeats, and you know about those, too. There were times when they felt ashamed of themselves, knowing they had not done their best, and there were times when they knew they had stood where their God had meant them to stand. All I’m trying to say is that they lived as well as they could.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

King, Stephen -- The Shining, Introduction to 2001 ed. (1977)

Dave — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 13:05:01 +0000

That truth is that monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
The Shining, Introduction to 2001 ed. (1977)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- The Stand (1978)

Dave — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 04:13:03 +0000

You couldn’t get hold of the things you’d done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
The Stand (1978)

King, Stephen -- Under the Dome (2009)

Dave — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 01:16:36 +0000

A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Under the Dome (2009)

King, Stephen -- Under the Dome, “Busted,” ch. 16 (2009)

Dave — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 03:51:48 +0000

America’s two great specialties are demagogues and rock and roll, and we’ve all heard plenty of both in our time.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Under the Dome, “Busted,” ch. 16 (2009)
(Source)

King, Stephen -- Interview with Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)

Dave — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:45:19 +0000

They pay me absurd amounts of money for something that I would do for free.

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Interview with Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)

Unabridged version of a Sunday Times Magazine interview. Full text.

King, Stephen -- Interview with Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)

Dave — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:50:05 +0000

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn’t keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there ….

Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Interview with Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s Journal (blog) (28 Apr 2012)

Unabridged version of a Sunday Times Magazine interview. Full text.