Delve our curated selection of thought–provoking Stephen King quotes and sayings on horror, imagination, human nature, and beyond.
Stephen King, an enigmatic storyteller is known for his mastery of horror, suspense and the supernatural. With a pen that seems to wield magic, King challenging our perceptions of what is possible within the realms of imagination.
As we embark on a journey through Stephen King quotes, we invite you to step into his intricate worlds. It’s realm where ordinary lives intersect with the extraordinary and where the boundaries between reality and fiction blur.
Beyond his storytelling prowess, Stephen King quotes offer profound insights into creativity, writing, and the intricacies of life. Each quote is a portal into the mind of a literary giant, inviting us to consider the complexities of the world and the power of the written word.
So, as we navigate through 100 Stephen King quotes – let us be transported into the captivating narratives he has spun. Whether you’re a fan of his gripping tales or a seeker of literary inspiration, this journey promises to be a magical exploration.
Inspirational Stephen King quotes
We lie best when we lie to ourselves.
Stephen King
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
Stephen King
People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.
Stephen King
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
Stephen King
Sometimes the embers are better than the campfire.
Stephen King
The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.
Stephen King
When all else fails, give up and go to the library.
Stephen King
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.
Stephen King
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
Stephen King
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes on read
Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows.
Stephen King
If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.
Stephen King
The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing…
Stephen King
Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.
Stephen King
I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, most fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read.
Stephen King
The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.
Stephen King
It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little (or not at all in some cases) should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written.
Stephen King
Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy.
Stephen King
The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.
Stephen King
For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want you to 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.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes on writing
When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.
Stephen King
If the stuff you’re writing is not for yourself, it won’t work.
Stephen King
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
Stephen King
He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.
Stephen King
When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.
Stephen King
If you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug–wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.
Stephen King
When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.
Stephen King
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.
Stephen King
Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how–to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.
Stephen King
When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes on book
JK Rowling created seven Horcruxes. She put a part of her soul in every book and now her books will live forever.
Stephen King
Books are a uniquely portable magic.
Stephen King
If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I’ll be all right as long as there’s a lending library.
Stephen King
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
The first draft of a book–even a long one–should take no more than three months, the length of a season.
Stephen King
You want to remember that while you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.
Stephen King
I enjoy going back and forth between plays and novels. It`s like having a wife and a mistress. Books are the wife; plays, the mistress.
Stephen King
The advantage of horror books is to take the reader and cut him out of the pack and work on him one on one. It has its advantages because the people that are there in the movie theater really are a mob. If you get one guy alone you can do a more efficient job of scaring him.
Stephen King
Come to a book as you would come to an unexplored land. Come without a map. Explore it, and draw your own map…. A book is like a pump. It gives nothing unless first you give to it.
Stephen King
Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes about love
Love isn’t soft, like the poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.
Stephen King
The most important things are the hardest to say.
Stephen King
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
Stephen King
Love, the simplest, strongest, and most unforgiving of all emotions.
Stephen King
French is the language that turns dirt into romance.
Stephen King
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.
Stephen King
Show me a man or a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love.
Stephen King
A life without love is like a tree without fruit.
Stephen King
That was what I wanted, but I don’t need it to be gone. I can love you and I can love life and bear the pain all at the same time. I think the pain might even make the rest better, the way a good setting can make a diamond look better.
Stephen King
Now I think all of us were born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it. You… you fill me up.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes about life
Life is a wheel, and if you wait long enough, it always comes back around to where it started.
Stephen King
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‘Why god? Why me?’ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‘There’s just something about you that pisses me off.’
Stephen King
It was life, often unsatisfying, frequently cruel, usually boring, sometimes beautiful, once in a while exhilarating.
Stephen King
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Stephen King
You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.
Stephen King
Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.
Stephen King
Life turns on a dime. Sometimes towards us, but more often it spins away, flirting and flashing as it goes: so long, honey, it was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?
Stephen King
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.
Stephen King
You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all sane. And I think it is. I’ve had a lot of time to think about that. And what I keep coming back to is [her] dying declaration: ‘So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.’
Stephen King
Life’s simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes about friendship
No good friends, no bad friends; only people you want, need to be with. People who build their houses in your heart.
Stephen King
Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.
Stephen King
I think that friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds.
Stephen King
Friends. They aren’t any such thing as good friend or bad friend. Maybe there are just friend.
Stephen King
People who stand by you when you’re hurt and who helped you feel not so lonely. Maybe there are worth being scared for and hoping for and living for. Maybe worth dying for too.
Stephen King
Love among the ruins… I’ll tell you something, my friend: Weird love’s better than no love at all.
Stephen King
If you’ve ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you’ll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be.
Stephen King
Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.
Stephen King
I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 – Jesus, did you?
Stephen King
Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes about stories
The story is the only thing that’s important. Everything else will take care of itself.
Stephen King
If you can tell a story, everything else becomes possible. But without story, nothing is possible, because nobody wants to hear about your sensitive characters if there’s nothing happening in the story. And the same is true with mood.
Stephen King
The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
Stephen King
But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
Stephen King
Politics always change. Stories never do.
Stephen King
The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.
Stephen King
In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring,’ the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
Stephen King
Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story.
Stephen King
Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace–up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story… To make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all.
Stephen King
Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes about fear
Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.
Stephen King
You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
Stephen King
If a fear cannot be articulated, it can’t be conquered.
Stephen King
They were nice enough people and all, but there wasn’t much love in them. Because they were too busy being afraid. 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.
Stephen King
I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.
Stephen King
Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend.
Stephen King
Let’s talk, you and I. Let’s talk about fear. The house is empty as I write this; a cold February rain is falling outside. It’s night. Sometimes when the wind blows the way it’s blowing now, we lose the power.
Stephen King
Fear is the emotion that makes us blind.
Stephen King
I tend to scare myself.
Stephen King
But for now it’s on, and so let’s talk very honestly about fear. Let’s talk very rationally about moving to the rim of madnessand… and perhaps over the edge.
Stephen King
Stephen King quotes about magic
Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.
Stephen King
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
I believe that the combination of pencil and memory creates a kind of practical magic, and magic is dangerous.
Stephen King
Dumbo got airborne with the help of a magic feather; you may feel the urge to grasp a passive verb or one of those nasty adverbs for the same reason.
Stephen King
I do not know where it finally fetched up, if it ever did; perhaps it reached the sea and sails there forever, like a magic boat in a fairytale.
Stephen King
Just remember before you do that Dumbo didn’t need the feather; the magic was in him.
Stephen King
We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style… but as we move along, you’d do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.
Stephen King
People seem to think there’s a magic formula to writing, i just write 1 word at a time.
Stephen King
The scariest, most terrifying thing that I fear? Yes. My Imagination. I thought you were going to say “Fear, itself.” Then you have a small imagination.
Stephen King
Small towns harbor small imaginations.
Stephen King
Final thoughts
Through the labyrinthine corridors of Stephen King quotes, we’re left with a tapestry woven from the threads of fear and imagination. His words are not merely sentences on a page; they are mirrors that reflecting our deepest fears, desires, and vulnerabilities.
These Stephen King quotes remind us that literature is a vehicle for exploration–of the truths that often lie beneath the surface. They challenge us to confront the darkness within ourselves and find the courage to embrace the light.
Not only entertainment, in the enigmatic tapestry of Stephen King quotes, we find a reflection of the complexities of being human. It’s a reflection that continues to resonate long after we’ve turned the final page.
So, as we step out of King’s literary universe and back into our own, let us carry with us the echoes of his words. May these Stephen King quotes inspire us to delve into the depths of our own creativity and to approach the mysteries of life with courage.