“When you're twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It's only when you get to be twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect that you've been looking at the map upside down, and not until you're forty are you entirely sure. By the time you're sixty, take it from me, you're fucking lost.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“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.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“You think Okay, I get it, I'm prepared for the worst, but you hold out that small hope, see, and that's what fucks you up. That's what kills you.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I'm blue -- when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day -- I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn't always a butcher's game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they are precious.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“People think first love is sweet, and never sweeter than when that first bond snaps. You've heard a thousand pop and country songs that prove the point; some fool got his heart broke. Yet that first broken heart is always the most painful, the slowest to mend, and leaves the most visible scar. What's so sweet about that?”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Passing time adds false memories and modifies real ones.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“The last good time always comes, and when you see the darkness creeping toward you, you hold on to what was bright and good. You hold on for dear life.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“My father had taught me - mostly by example - that if a man wanted to be in charge of his life, he had to be in charge of his problems.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“I'm not sure anybody ever gets completely over their first love, and that still rankles. Part of me still wants to know what was wrong with me. What I was lacking.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“What I know now is that gallant young men rarely get pussy. Put it on a sampler and hang it in your kitchen.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“In the years since, I've discovered there's a lot to be said for boredom.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“...I'd been raised by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness...”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Nothing screws with memory like repetition.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Young women and young men grow up, but old women and old men just grow older and surer they've got right on their side.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“We rarely get what we imagine in this world.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“This is a badly broken world, full of wars and cruelty and senseless tragedy. Every human being who inhabits it is served his or her portion of unhappiness and wake up nights.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Some days are treasure. Not many but I think in almost every life there are a few.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Pops gave him a cool stare that settled Tom down - a thing not always easy to do. "Son, do you know what history is?"
"Uh...stuff that happened in the past?"
"Nope," he said, trying on his canvas change-belt. "History is the collective and ancestral shit of the human race, a great big and ever growing pile of crap. Right now, we're standin at the top of it, but pretty soon we'll be buried under the doodoo of generations yet to come. That's why your folks' clothes look so funny in old photographs, to name but a single example. And, as someone who's destined to buried beneath the shit of your children and grandchildren, I think you should be just a leetle more forgiving.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Climb aboard, Jonesy. I'm going to send you up where the air is rare and the view is much more than fair.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“I kissed her, just a gentle brush of my lips across hers. It was like swallowing a tiny drop of something incredibly sweet.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“Age looked at youth, and youth's applause first weakened, then died.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“We all write fiction when we write about the past.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“God and heaven lasted about four years longer than the Tooth Fairy”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“He says there's a reason wife and life sound almost the same.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
“The gate is the key to the kingdom.”
― Stephen King, quote from Joyland
Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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“For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that. Martin Luther King Jr., “Where”
― quote from While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
“In America, conservative historian Francis Fukuyama wrote that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history: liberal capitalist democracy had won, no ideology could challenge it anymore, and nothing remained but a little cleanup work around the edges while all the world got on board the train headed for the only truth. …
On the other side of the planet, however, jihadists and Wahhabis were drawing very different conclusions from all these thunderous events [Iran's 1979 revolution and ouster of US presence and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan]. In Iran, it seemed to them, Islam had brought down the Shah and driven out America. In Afghanistan, Muslims had not just beaten the Red Army but toppled the Soviet Union itself. Looking at all this, Jihadists saw a pattern they thought they recognized. The First Community had defeated the two superpowers of its day, the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires, simply by having God on its side. Modern Muslims also confronted two superpowers, and they had now brought one of them down entirely. On down, one to go was how it looked to the jihadists and the Wahabbis. History coming to an end? Hardly. As these radicals saw it, history was just getting interesting.”
― Tamim Ansary, quote from Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
“There were two kinds of cases before the Supreme Court. There were abortion cases—and there were all the others.
Abortion was (and is) the central legal issue before the Court. It defined the judicial philosophies of the justices. It dominated the nomination and confirmation process. It nearly delineated the difference between the national Democratic and Republican parties.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“So how do you know when the boy's perfect for you?' Dulcie asked
Betty gave her a tender look. 'You'll just know. That sounds vague, I know, but it's true.”
― Lesley Pearse, quote from Trust Me
“With age one never looked far ahead. The marathon horizons of youth narrowed and shortened into hurdles of age.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
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