The Stand Quotes

“That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
― Stephen King , The Stand

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“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, The Stand

“A person can't change all at once.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him making him smile.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“You couldn't not like someone who liked the guitar.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Sometimes [...] real love is silent as well as blind.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“She couldn't be on his wavelength all the time. That's all. When you could recognize that and deal with it, you were on your way to an adult relationship.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Nobody likes to see a stupid guy wise up.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, 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, The Stand

“And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“God doesn't bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“The thought process can never be complete without articulation.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But... this is what God wants of you.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“It's hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else's.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Superstition, like true love, needs time to grow and reflect upon itself.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is the most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“It don't matter if you believe in God Nick, he believes in you.”
― Stephen King, The Stand