“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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“I’ll tell every one in the world that you are the only one that matters.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from In Our Time
“You alive?” Hadrian asked.
“If I were dead, I don’t think there’d be geese.” Royce tilted his head up to catch the arrow of birds heading south. “But maybe they’re evil geese.”
“Evil geese?”
“We have no idea what goes on in the water fowl world. They might have been a gang that stole eggs or something.”
“I’m guessing you have a fever.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Tower
“Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made.”
― Anthony Powell, quote from A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement
“If it has to be done at all, it must be done with grace.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Boleyn Inheritance
“Do not struggle when the hook of a word pulls you into the air of truth and you cannot breathe.”
― Louise Murphy, quote from The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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