“A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love;I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of these connections is horribly, outrageously high... and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid. (From introductory notes.)”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back?”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“Never believe a writer. Listen to them, by all means, but never believe them.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“Then his lids closed slowly over his slightly bloodshot eyes, and Mort Rainey, who had yet to discover what true horror was all about, fell asleep.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“You never ever asked Lady Luck for a date; she had a way of standing men up just when they needed her the most. But if she showed up on her own ... well, it was wise to drop whatever it was you were doing and take her out and wine her and dine her just as lavishly as you could. That was one bitch who always put out if you treated her right.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“still believe, I suppose, in the coming of the White and in finding a place to make a stand ... and defending that place to the death.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“I’m not taking that,” Mort said, and part of him was marvelling at what a really accommodating beast a man was: when someone held something out to you, your first instinct was to take it. No matter if it was a check for a thousand dollars or a stick of dynamite with a lit and fizzing fuse, your first instinct was to take it.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“Writing, it seems to me, is a secret act—as secret as dreaming—and that was one aspect of this strange and dangerous craft I had never thought about much.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“Have I gotten everything right? I doubt it. Not even the great Daniel Defoe did that; in Robinson Crusoe, our hero strips naked, swims out to the ship he has recently escaped....and then fills up his pockets with items he will need to stay alive on his desert island.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“while the road of good intentions might end in hell, the people who tried to fill the potholes along the way deserved at least some credit.”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
“I was drunk and half killed with fuckin”
― Stephen King, quote from Four Past Midnight
Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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“fear of death.” Our study of psychoneurotic disturbances points to a more comprehensive explanation, which includes that of Westermarck. When a wife loses her husband, or a daughter her mother, it not infrequently happens that the survivor is afflicted with tormenting scruples, called ‘obsessive reproaches’ which raises the question whether she herself has not been guilty through carelessness or neglect, of the death of the beloved person. No recalling of the care with which she nursed the invalid, or direct refutation of the asserted guilt can put an end to the torture, which is the pathological expression of mourning and which in time slowly subsides. Psychoanalytic investigation of such cases has made us acquainted with the secret mainsprings of this affliction. We have ascertained that these obsessive reproaches are in a certain sense justified and therefore are immune to refutation or objections. Not that the mourner has really been guilty of the death or that she has really been careless, as the obsessive reproach asserts; but still there was something in her, a wish of which she herself was unaware, which was not displeased with the fact that death came, and which would have brought it about sooner had it been strong enough. The reproach now reacts against this unconscious wish after the death of the beloved person. Such hostility, hidden in the unconscious behind tender love, exists in almost all cases of intensive emotional allegiance to a particular person, indeed it represents the classic case, the prototype of the ambivalence of human emotions. There is always more or less of this ambivalence in everybody’s disposition; normally it is not strong enough to give rise to the obsessive reproaches we have described. But where there is abundant predisposition for it, it manifests itself in the relation to those we love most, precisely where you would least expect it. The disposition to compulsion neurosis which we have so often taken for comparison with taboo problems, is distinguished by a particularly high degree of this original ambivalence of emotions.”
― Sigmund Freud, quote from Totem and Taboo
“Ugh," she muttered, tugging his hair. "Your are so pretty. Like delicate butterfly beneath my boot."
"Ugh, " he replied, pulling one of her own curls, which were thick and coarse. "You are so mad. Like a rabid hound that needs to be put down.”
― Kiersten White, quote from And I Darken
“And he still has clothes on, which means it couldn’t have burned his skin in too many places. He’ll be fine.” “Yeah, good that,” Newt replied with a sarcastic chuckle. “Remind me not to hire you as my buggin’ doctor anytime soon.”
― James Dashner, quote from The Maze Runner Series
“WHY THE SEA IS SALT Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were two brothers, the one rich and the other poor. When Christmas Eve came, the poor one had not a bite in the house, either of meat or bread; so he went to his brother, and begged him, in God's name, to give him something for Christmas Day. It was by no means the first time that the brother had been forced to give something to him, and he was not better pleased at being asked now than he generally was. "If you will do what I ask you, you shall have a whole ham," said he. The poor one immediately thanked him, and promised this. "Well, here is the ham, and now you must go straight to Dead Man's Hall," said the rich brother, throwing the ham to him. "Well, I will do what I have promised," said the other, and he took the ham and set off. He went on and on for the livelong day, and at nightfall he came to a place where there was a bright light. "I have no doubt this is the place," thought the man with the ham. An old man with a long white beard was standing in the outhouse, chopping Yule logs. "Good-evening," said the man with the ham. "Good-evening to you. Where are you going at this late hour?" said the man. "I am going to Dead Man's Hall, if only I am on the right track," answered the poor man. "Oh! yes, you are right enough, for it is here," said the old man. "When you get inside they will all want to buy your ham, for they don't get much meat to eat there; but you must not sell it unless you can get the hand-mill which stands behind the door for it. When you come out again I will teach you how to stop the hand-mill, which is useful for almost everything." So the man with the ham thanked the other for his good advice, and rapped at the door. When he got in, everything happened just as the old man had said it would: all the people, great and small, came round him like ants on an ant-hill, and each tried to outbid the other for the ham. "By rights my old woman and I ought to have it for our Christmas dinner, but, since you have set your hearts upon it, I must just give it up to you," said the man. "But, if I sell it, I will have the hand-mill which is standing there behind the door." At first they would not hear of this, and haggled and bargained with the man, but he stuck to what he had said, and the people were forced to give him the hand-mill. When the man came out again into the yard, he asked the old wood-cutter how he was to stop the hand-mill, and when he had learned that, he thanked him and set off home with all the speed he could, but did not get there until after the clock had struck twelve on Christmas Eve.”
― Andrew Lang, quote from The Blue Fairy Book
“I'm coming to London next week, by the way, in unhappy circumstances. Are we getting on fine as we are? Or would you like a drink?”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
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