"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— 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 (Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay)

"Get busy living or get busy dying."
— Stephen King (Shawshank Redemption)

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once."
— Stephen King

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
— Stephen King

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
— 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

"I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk."
— Stephen King

"Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to."
— Stephen King (Dolores Claiborne)

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. (from the introduction)"
— Stephen King (Skeleton Crew)

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."
— Stephen King

"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
— Stephen King

"Go then, there are other worlds than these."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you."
— Stephen King

"Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding."
— Stephen King

"The most important things are the hardest 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. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear."
— Stephen King (Different Seasons)

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."
— Stephen King

"The scariest moment is always just before you start."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle."
— Stephen King (Night Shift)

"I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart."
— Stephen King (The Gunslinger)

"There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book."
— Stephen King

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."
— Stephen King

"Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on."
— Stephen King (Bag of Bones)

"I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all."
— Stephen King

"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."
— Stephen King

"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud. "
— Stephen King

"Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around."
— Stephen King

"Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym."
— Stephen King

"It is the tale, not he who tells it."
— Stephen King

"Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position."
— Stephen King

"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries."
— Stephen King

"Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame."
— Stephen King

"...you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there, too."
— Stephen King (It)

"You can't deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants."
— Stephen King

"That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery."
— Stephen King (The Stand)

"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."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics."
— Stephen King

""Nobody likes a clown at midnight""
— Stephen King

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness."
— Stephen King

"Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters."
— Stephen King (The Shining)

"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

"I'm having a magenta day. Not just red, but magenta!"
— Stephen King (Needful Things)

"We all float down here!"
— Stephen King (It)

"There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids."
— Stephen King

"[A] tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh."
— Stephen King

"Friends.
They aren’t any such thing as good friend or bad friend.
Maybe there are just friend.
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.
If that what has to be.
No bad friends.
Only people you want.
Need to be with.
People who build their houses in your heart."
— Stephen King