Here are some memorable quotes from Stephen King’s books. These quotes capture the essence of Stephen King’s writing, spanning horror, suspense, and poignant reflections on life and humanity.
Stephen King Book Quotes
1. “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
— The Shawshank Redemption (from Different Seasons)
2. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
— The Shining
3. “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
— Danse Macabre
4. “The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.”
— Different Seasons
5. “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
— The Shining
6. “We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”
— It
7. “Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”
— The Green Mile
8. “The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.”
— It
9. “Books are uniquely portable magic.”
— On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
10. “The world has teeth and it can bite you with them anytime.”
— The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
11. “Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.”
— Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (from Different Seasons)
12. “It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.”
— The Gunslinger
13. “Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”
— Bag of Bones
14. “There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around.”
— The Stand
15. “The only real difference between kids and adults is the kids are better at hiding their true selves.”
— It
16. “Everything’s eventual.”
— Everything’s Eventual
17. “Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer. Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.”
— Wizard and Glass
18. “People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
— Misery
19. “We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other.”
— It
20. “Ghosts are real, this much I know.”
— Bag of Bones
21. “I’m not a psychopath, Anderson. I’m a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research.”
— Mr. Mercedes
22. “Sooner or later, even the fastest runners have to stand and fight.”
— The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
23. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
— On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
24. “I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better.”
— The Dark Half
25. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
— The Gunslinger
26. “There’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.”
— Different Seasons
27. “The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.”
— The Stand
28. “The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.”
— The Drawing of the Three
29. “We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”
— It
30. “They were close to the end of the beginning.”
— The Stand
31. “All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”
— Danse Macabre
32. “Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”
— The Green Mile
33. “Life is like a wheel… and it will all come round right.”
— ‘Salem’s Lot
34. “Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”
— Doctor Sleep
35. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
— On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
36. “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
— The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
37. “We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.”
— 11/22/63
38. “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
— On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
39. “The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.”
— Hearts in Atlantis
40. “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
— Danse Macabre
