Stephen King is a famous American author who is credited with reinvigorating the horror fiction genre in the late 20th century.
Stephen King is a University of Maine English graduate who began his career with the novel “Carrie” in 1974 launching his signature blend of horror, fantasy and science fiction.
His stories have explored numerous terror-inducing themes, from supernatural phenomena to psychological horror.
His pseudonym Richard Bachman further expanded his repertoire. King’s later works like “Dolores Claiborne” showcased detailed psychological portraits, venturing beyond traditional horror.
His books have sold over 100 million copies by the early ’90s, solidifying his name in the horror genre.
He has also authored TV and film scripts, dabbled in book distribution innovation and shared insights into his career in “On Writing”.
Related: Wayne Dyer Quotes and Oprah Winfrey Quotes.
Recognizing his contributions, King received the National Book Foundation’s Medal and the National Medal of Arts in 2003 and 2015 respectively.
I have curated the famous quotes by Stephen King.
Most Famous Stephen King Quotes
1. “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” ~ {Stephen King}.
2. “Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.” ~ {Stephen King}.
3. “Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” ~ {Stephen King}.
4. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” ~ {Stephen King}.
5. “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ~ {Stephen King}.
6. “You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.” ~ {Stephen King}.
7. “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” ~ {Stephen King}.
8. “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” ~ {Stephen King}.
9. “Do it for joy and you can do it forever.” ~ {Stephen King}.
10. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ~ {Stephen King}.
11. “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ~ {Stephen King}.
12. “Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.” ~ {Stephen King}.
13. “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}.
14. “There’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.” ~ {Stephen King}.
15. “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” ~ {Stephen King}.
16. “Go then, there are other worlds than these.” ~ {Stephen Edwin King}.
17. “Above all else, be consistent.” ~ {Stephen King}.
18. “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” ~ {Stephen King}.
19. “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}.
20. “Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter. ” ~ {Stephen King}.
21. “You want to remember that while you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.” ~ {Stephen King}.
22. “I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.” ~ {Stephen King}.
23. “Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair.” ~ {Stephen King}.
24. “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” ~ {Stephen King}.
25. “When the time is gone, you can never get it back.” ~ {Stephen King}.
26. “Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” ~ {Stephen King}.
27. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” ~ {Stephen King}.
28. “To write is human, to edit is divine.” ~ {Stephen King}.
Best Stephen King Quotes
29. “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” ~ {Stephen King}.
30. “Time heals all wounds.” ~ {Stephen King}.
31. “Once I fell in love with books, I fell in love completely.” ~ {Stephen King}.
32. “The most important things are the hardest to say.” ~ {Stephen King}.
33. “The brain is a muscle that can move the world.” ~ {Stephen King}.
34. “Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.” ~ {Stephen King}.
35. “When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.” ~ {Stephen King}.
36. “Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?” ~ {Stephen King}.
37. “It’s a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.” ~ {Stephen King}.
39. “When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’” ~ {Stephen King}.
39. “Your hair is winter fire January embers My heart burns there, too.” ~ {Stephen King}.
40. “If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?” ~ {Stephen King}.
41. “The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.” ~ {Stephen King}.
42. “Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.” ~ {Stephen King}.
43. “I’m most afraid of losing my mind. You lose your identity, your sense of who you are, where you are.” ~ {Stephen King}.
44. “Sarcastic people tend to be marshmallows underneath the armor.” ~ {Stephen King}.
45. “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” ~ {Stephen King}.
46. “You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.” ~ {Stephen King}.
47. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” ~ {Stephen King}.
48. “JK Rowling created seven Horcruxes. She put a part of her soul in every book and now her books will live forever.” ~ {Stephen King}.
49. “Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.” ~ {Stephen King}.
50. “The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.” ~ {Stephen King}.
Top Stephen King Quotes
51. “Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.” ~ {Stephen King}.
52. “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” ~ {Stephen King}.
53. “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}.
54. “A change is as good as a rest.” ~ {Stephen King}.
55. “The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them.” ~ {Stephen King}.
56. “Murder is like potato chips: you can’t stop with just one.” ~ {Stephen King}.
57. “The monster never dies.” ~ {Stephen King}.
58. “The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.” ~ {Stephen King}.
59. “Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” ~ {Stephen King}.
60. “Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.” ~ {Stephen King}.
61. “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” ~ {Stephen King}.
62. “I write to find out what I think.” ~ {Stephen King}.
63. “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}.
64. “It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” ~ {Stephen King}.
65. “Only God gets things right the first time.” ~ {Stephen King}.
66. “Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.” ~ {Stephen King}.
67. “The turtle couldn’t help us.” ~ {Stephen King}.
68. “Time and tide wait for no man.” ~ {Stephen King}.
69. “Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. It’s better not to think about it so much and just let it happen.” ~ {Stephen King}.
70. “When all else fails, give up and go to the library.” ~ {Stephen King}.
71. “I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.” ~ {Stephen King}.
72. “When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.” ~ {Stephen King}.
73. “I work until beer o’clock.” ~ {Stephen King}.
74. “A boy does not need a father unless he is a good father, but a good father is indispensable.” ~ {Stephen King}.
75. “A man without a sense of purpose, even one whose bank accounts are stuffed with money, is always a small man.” ~ {Stephen King}.
76. “If you don’t control your temper, your temper will control you.” ~ {Stephen King}.
77. “Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.” ~ {Stephen King}.
78. “Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.” ~ {Stephen King}.
79. “Madness is a kind of mental suicide.” ~ {Stephen King}.
80. “A short story is like a kiss in the dark.” ~ {Stephen King}.
81. “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}.
82. “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}.
83. “Long days and pleasant nights.” ~ {Stephen King}.
84. “Talent is never static. It’s always growing or dying.” ~ {Stephen King}.
85. “It’s a long way back to Eden, Sweetheart, so don’t sweat the small stuff.” ~ {Stephen King}.
Famous Stephen King Quotes
86. “He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.” ~ {Stephen King}.
87. “People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.” ~ {Stephen King}.
88. “As a species we’re fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?” ~ {Stephen King}.
89. “The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.” ~ {Stephen King}.
90. “Reading in bed can be heaven, assuming you can get just the right amount of light on the page and aren’t prone to spilling your coffee or cognac on the sheets.” ~ {Stephen King}.
91. “The thought process can never be complete without articulation.” ~ {Stephen King}.
92. “I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It’s you I’m not entirely sure of.” ~ {Stephen King}.
93. “A short story is a different thing all together – a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.” ~ {Stephen King}.
94. “In polite society, we call our obsessions hobbies.” ~ {Stephen King}.
95. “You cannot condemn a man for what may only be a figment of your own imagination.” ~ {Stephen King}.
96. “The past is obdurate.” ~ {Stephen King}.
97. “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}.
98. “Don’t ask me silly questions, I won’t play silly games. I’m just a simple choo choo train And I’ll always be the same. I only want to race along Beneath the bright blue sky And be a happy choo choo train Until the day I die.” ~ {Stephen King}.
99. “I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.” ~ {Stephen King}.
Short Stephen King Quotes
100. “There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.” ~ {Stephen King}.
101. “You should never trust a person who prays in public.” ~ {Stephen King}.
102. “Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.” ~ {Stephen King}.
103. “People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.” ~ {Stephen King}.
104. “Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on.” ~ {Stephen King}.
105. “If you want to play, you gotta pay.” ~ {Stephen King}.
106. “What is writing? Writing is telepathy.” ~ {Stephen King}.
107. “We lie best when we lie to ourselves.” ~ {Stephen King}.
108. “There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.” ~ {Stephen King}.
109. “Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward life with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.” ~ {Stephen King}.
110. “If you don’t have the time to do something right, where are you going to find the time to fix it?” ~ {Stephen King}.
111. “Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.” ~ {Stephen King}.
112. “By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” ~ {Stephen King}.
113. “I have two amazing things in my life: I’m pain-free and I’m debt-free.” ~ {Stephen King}.
114. “We all float down here!” ~ {Stephen King}.
115. “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}.
116. “We’re all going to die; I’m just trying to make it a little more interesting.” ~ {Stephen King}.
117. “The unconscious mind writes poetry if it’s left alone.” ~ {Stephen King}.
118. “A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something that is bought by the customer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless.” ~ {Stephen King}.
119. “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}.
120. “We have once again succeeded in destroying what we could not create.” ~ {Stephen King}.
121. “We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.” ~ {Stephen King}.
122. “A coward judges all he sees by what he is.” ~ {Stephen King}.
123. “The good thing about being ol, is you don’t have to worry about dying young.” ~ {Stephen King}.
124. “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}.
Inspiring Stephen King Quotes
125. “Love isn’t soft, like the poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.” ~ {Stephen King}.
126. “True sorrow is as rare as true love.” ~ {Stephen King}.
127. “The truth is in the details.” ~ {Stephen King}.
128. “Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.” ~ {Stephen King}.
129. “And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.” ~ {Stephen King}.
130. “If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.” ~ {Stephen King}.
131. “Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.” ~ {Stephen King}.
132. “Sometimes dead is better.” ~ {Stephen King}.
133. “Fear is the emotion that makes us blind.” ~ {Stephen King}.
134. “You can’t polish a turd.” ~ {Stephen King}.
135. “Some things were better lost than found.” ~ {Stephen King}.
136. “It’s best to be ruthless with the past.” ~ {Stephen King}.
137. “Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters.” ~ {Stephen King}.
138. “It’s alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.” ~ {Stephen King}.
139. “I’d like to learn French well enough to write in that language.” ~ {Stephen King}.
140. “I am your number one fan.” ~ {Stephen King}.
141. “A product can be quickly outdated, but a successful brand is timeless.” ~ {Stephen King}.
142. “Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.” ~ {Stephen King}.
143. “It’s a cash and carry world. Sometimes you pay a little. Mostly it’s a lot. Sometimes, it’s everything you have.” ~ {Stephen King}.
144. “Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.” ~ {Stephen King}.
145. “Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy.” ~ {Stephen King}.
146. “Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time.” ~ {Stephen King}.
147. “We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.” ~ {Stephen King}.
148. “The soil of a man’s heart is stonier; a man grows what he can and tends it.” ~ {Stephen King}.
