Although best known as the “King of Horror,” Constant Readers (as he refers to his fans) know King’s books are also packed with stories of love, loss, redemption, and the dark underbelly of human nature. And these Stephen King quotes are proof of it.
Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine, on September 21, 1947. When he was just two-years-old, his father, Donald, abandoned the family. King’s mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King, was left to care for her two sons on her own. Unable to afford a sitter, she gave them books to pass the time as she worked a series of low-paying jobs.
The King boys grew to love reading and creating their own stories. They went on to start a self-published “newspaper” in high school, and King began submitting his writing to magazines. He sold his first professional short story, “The Glass Floor,” in 1967.
Nellie King taught her sons that the key to success is persistence. Before his first novel, Carrie was picked up by Doubleday, 30 publishers rejected it. One of the author’s greatest regrets is that while his mother lived to see him sign his first publishing contract, she passed away before Carrie (and King himself) achieved major commercial success.
Here are some of the most heartrending and thought-provoking Stephen King quotes…
On Love:
“Love is what moves the world, I’ve always thought. It is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down…bring them low…and make them crawl.”
“Love isn’t soft like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close.”
“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.”
“If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I’ll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it’s yours.”
On Loss:
“It’s hard to let go. Even when what you’re holding onto is full of thorns, it’s hard to let go. Maybe especially then.”
“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”
“Everyone loves something for nothing…even if it costs everything.”
“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.”
“Like all sweet dreams, it will be brief, but brevity makes sweetness, doesn’t it?”
On Redemption:
“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there…and still on your feet.”
“Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.”
“Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
“Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand.”
On Human Nature:
“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?”
“Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.”
“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
“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.”
“When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.”
Did you enjoy this collection of Stephen King quotes? If so, don’t forget to share them with others you know who are fans of his, too.
