30 Quotes From Stephen King To Inspire, Empower, And Terrify You

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

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“If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.”

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“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

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“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.”

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“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

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“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away.”

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“A short story is a different thing all together – a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

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“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.”

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“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”

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“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

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“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

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“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.”

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“Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity.”

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“Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”

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“I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.”

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“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”

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“God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.”

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“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.”

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“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.”

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“It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.”

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“FEAR stands for ‘fuck everything and run.'”

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“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.”

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“Sometimes, dead is better.”

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“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. When you find something at which you have talent, you do that thing (what ever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes pop out of your head.”

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“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”

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“Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman’s got to hold on to.”

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“The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…”

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“This inhuman place makes human monsters.”

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“It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”

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“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

Thought Catalog Logo Mark

Horror writer for Creepy Catalog, ESFP, Kylo Ren advocate, Slytherin, sassbasket.

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