The Dark Half Quotes

“You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“He didn’t know if that was really true or not, but he discovered something which was tremendously liberating: he didn’t care. He was very tired of thinking and thinking and still not knowing. He was also tired of being frightened, like a man who has entered a cave on a lark and now begins to suspect he is lost. Stop thinking about it, then. That’s the solution.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“But writers INVITE ghosts, maybe; along with actors and
artists, they are the only totally accepted mediums of our society. They make worlds that never
were, populate them with people who never existed, and then invite us to join them in their
fantasies. And we do it, don't we? Yes. We PAY to do it.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“...he was after all, a novelist...and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Cut him. Cut him while I stand here and watch. I want to see the blood flow. Don't make me tell you twice.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“The George George Stark George Starked over the Starky Stark.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“He sometimes believed that the compulsion to make fiction was no more than a bulwark against confusion, maybe even insanity. It was a desperate imposition of order by people able to find that precious stuff only in their minds . . . never in their hearts.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“I want to make sure I remember what real ugly is. I might want to tell my grandchildren someday.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Then hear this, and never forget it. Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls, but it takes a hero to keep on squeezing.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Stark lit a Pall Mall himself, picked up one of his Berols, opened his own notebook . . . and then paused. He looked at Thad with naked honesty. “I’m scared, hoss,” he said. And Thad felt a great wave of sympathy for Stark—in spite of everything he knew. Scared. Yes, of course you are, he thought. Only the ones just starting out—the kids—aren’t scared. The years go by and the words on the page don’t get any darker . . . but the white space sure does get whiter. Scared? You’d be crazier than you are if you weren’t. “I know,” he said. “And you know what it comes down to—the only way to do it is to do it.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“When he began writing it was often like this - a dry and sterile exercise. No, it was worse than that. Starting off always felt a little obscene to him, like French-kissing a corpse.
But he had learned that, if he kept at it, if he simply kept pushing the words along the page, something else kicked in, something which was both wonderful and terrible. The words as individual units began to disappear. Characters who were stilted and lifeless began to limber up, as if he had kept them in some small closet overnight and they had to loosen their muscles before they could begin their complicated dances. Something began to happen in his brain; he could almost feel the shape of the electrical waves there changing, losing their prissy goose-step discipline, turning into the soft, sloppy delta waves of dreaming sleep.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“He is two men - he has ALWAYS been two men. That's what any man or woman who makes believe for a living must be. The one who exists in the normal world...and the one who creates worlds. They are two. Always at least two...”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Химерність вчинків, схоже, зростає у прямій залежності від інтелекту чоловіка чи жінки, які на це страждають.”
― Стівен Кінг, The Dark Half

“Письменники викликають привидів, можливо; разом з акторами та художниками вони є цілком визнаними медіумами нашого суспільства. Вони створюють світи, яких ніколи не існувало, населяють людьми, яких ніколи не існувало, а потім запрошують нас приєднуватися до них у їхніх фантазіях. І ми це робимо, чи не так? Так. Ми гроші платимо за це.”
― Стівен Кінг, The Dark Half

“Писати було жахливо важко; тільки якесь створіння надприродної цілеспрямованості могло витримати тортури цього зусилля”
― Стівен Кінг, The Dark Half

“Доді була хвойдою з сердцем банківського службовця і душею зажерливого таргана”
― Стівен Кінг, The Dark Half

“This one’s as tired as an old whore’s twat at daybreak, though.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“And, as an afterthought, he added pleasantly to the O.R. nurse: “I want that silly cunt who ran out of here fired. Make a note, please.” “Yes, Doctor.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“«Sa, anch'io gioco un pochino a tennis, e pensavo...»
«Se lei gioca a tennis solo un pochino, allora probabilmente non è al mio livello.»”
― Ken Follett, The Dark Half

“Mr. Stevens, whose other novels include Rat Pack, By Reason of Insanity, and The Anvil Chorus.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“college and university professors have much more flexible views on the subject of craziness than most other people, and sometimes they have no view of it at all, preferring to think of people as either dull (but sane), rather eccentric (but sane), or very eccentric (but still quite sane, old boy).”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Gatherings of sparrows are rather more ominous, at least according to Barringer. Sparrows are said to be the outriders of the deceased.” “Which means—” “Which means their job is to guide lost souls back into the land of the living. They are, in other words, the harbingers of the living dead.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Sparrows, loons, and especially whippoorwills are psychopomps,”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“A line from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show got into his head and refused to leave: Eenie-meenie-chili-beanie, the spirits are about to speak!”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“The point was simple: if someone wanted you badly enough, and if that someone had just a little luck, he would get you.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“he waggled the phone, which now looked a little like an android demolished by ray-gun fire in a science fiction epic—”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“And there was something else: he was a writer, an imaginer. He had never met one—including himself—who had more than the vaguest idea of why he or she did anything. He sometimes believed that the compulsion to make fiction was no more than a bulwark against confusion, maybe even insanity. It was a desperate imposition of order by people able to find that precious stuff only in their minds . . . never in their hearts.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“lie me an alibi. It was a phrase which Alexis Machine, arch-villain of the George Stark novels, sometimes used.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“Rawlie DeLesseps and that awful woman from the History Department he’s been going out with since Jesus was a baby,” she said. “The one who goes around blaring: ‘Just call me Billie, everyone does.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half

“he was composed chiefly of high aspirations and low funds, both of them floating on a generous cushion of bullshit.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Half