“Talent in cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
Work
“I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.”
DadAll Quotes by Stephen King
“And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.”
God“And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.”
Sad“Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.”
Fear“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.”
Good“The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.”
Trust“But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.”
Change“I've always believed in God. I also think that's the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when you're in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement.”
God“I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.”
Dad“Only enemies speak the truth friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”
Truth“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.'”
Family“Well, I'm like a drug addict, I'm always saying I'm going to stop, and then I don't, what I've said consistently is that I hope I know when to stop: when it starts to get repetitive.”
Hope“We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based.”
Politics“Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you're forced back on your own imagination.”
Imagination“I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.”
Home“I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.”
Home“I love the movies, and when I go to see a movie that's been made from one of my books, I know that it isn't going to be exactly like my novel because a lot of other people have interpreted it. But I also know it has an idea that I'll like because that idea occurred to me, and I spent a year, or a year and a half of my life working on it.”
Movies“A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we're children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they're scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it's pretty much in the eye of the beholder.”
Beauty“We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.”
Change“You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”
Hope