Jen > Jen's Quotes

“Because it makes me happy when the words fall together and the picture comes and the make-believe people do things that delight me. But it's better with you, Constant Reader. Always better with you.”
― Stephen King, Just After Sunset

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― 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

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

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

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― 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

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“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

“Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
― Stephen King

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

“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: A Memoir of the Craft

“Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”
― Stephen King

“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
― Stephen King

“Your hair is winter fire
January embers
My heart burns there, too.”
― Stephen King, It

“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, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Just remember that Dumbo didn't need the feather; the magic was in him. ”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“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

“Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Do it for joy and you can do it forever”
― King, Stephen

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”
― Stephen King

“Hug and kiss whoever helped get you - financially, mentally, morally, emotionally - to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you're too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don't let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.”
― Stephen King

“When I was a kid I believed everything I was told, everything I read, and every dispatch sent out by my own overheated imagination. This made for more than a few sleepless nights, but it also filled the world I lived in with colors and textures I would not have traded for a lifetime of restful nights.”
― Stephen King, Nightmares and Dreamscapes

“Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.”
― Stephen King