“Every religion lies. Every moral precept is a delusion. Even the stars are a mirage. The truth is darkness, and the only thing that matters is making a statement before one enters it. Cutting the skin of the world and leaving a scar. That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Life is a crap carnival with shit prizes.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Rich people can be generous, even the ones with bloodcurdling political views can be generous, but most believe in generosity on their own terms, and underneath (not so deep, either), they’re always afraid someone is going to steal their presents and eat their birthday cake.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Creepy as hell. You ever see that TV movie about the clown in the sewer?”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Never tell a lie when you can tell the truth.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Most people are sheep and sheep don't eat meat”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Everybody likes the ice cream man.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“When you gaze into the abyss, Nietzsche wrote, the abyss also gazes into you.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“How cruel would a supreme being have to be to make a world as fucked-up as this one?”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Any system created by the mind of man can be hacked by the mind of man.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Hodges has read there are wells in Iceland so deep you can drop a stone down them and never hear the splash. He thinks some human souls are like that.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Hodges remembers an old saying: even on the darkest day, the sun shines on some dog’s ass.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“even on the darkest day, the sun shines on some dog’s ass.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“That’s all history is, after all: scar tissue.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“[E]ighty percent of success is just showing up.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“More coffee?” Hodges declines with a smile. Hot can only do so much for bad coffee.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“It’s easy—too easy—to either disbelieve or disregard someone you dislike.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“In a don’t-give-a-fuck world, he is about to become the ultimate don’t-give-a-fucker.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“It wasn't fair, but what is? Life is a crap carnival with shit prizes.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“That had to be the answer. When you heard hoofbeats, you didn't think zebras.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“What he knows now is that guilt isn’t the only reason people commit suicide. Sometimes you can just get bored with afternoon TV.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Holly sighs. “I’m out of cigarettes, too.” “Those things will kill you,” Jerome says. She gives him a flat look. “Yes! That’s part of their charm.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“as if the cops expected the big gray sedan to start up by itself, like that old Plymouth in the horror movie,”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“I did something good for you just now. Before the sun goes down tonight, I want you to pass it on.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“College was for people who didn’t know they were smart.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Any system created by the mind of man can be hacked by the mind of man. You feel me?”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
“Woody Allen was right: eighty percent of success is just showing up.”
― Stephen King, quote from Mr. Mercedes
Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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“Nothing is going to happen to me, or you, for that matter.
Anything can happen, though.
Anything can happen. But most always, just normal things happen, and people have happy lives.”
― David Wroblewski, quote from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
“I was extremely curious about the alternatives to the kind of life I had been leading, and my friends and I exchanged rumors and scraps of information we dug from official publications. I was struck less by the West's technological developments and high living standards than by the absence of political witch-hunts, the lack of consuming suspicion, the dignity of the individual, and the incredible amount of liberty. To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people there attacking the West and praising China. Almost every other day the front page of Reference, the newspaper which carded foreign press items, would feature some eulogy of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. At first I was angered by these, but they soon made me see how tolerant another society could be. I realized that this was the kind of society I wanted to live in: where people were allowed to hold different, even outrageous views. I began to see that it was the very tolerance of oppositions, of protesters, that kept the West progressing.
Still, I could not help being irritated by some observations. Once I read an article by a Westerner who came to China to see some old friends, university professors, who told him cheerfully how they had enjoyed being denounced and sent to the back end of beyond, and how much they had relished being reformed. The author concluded that Mao had indeed made the Chinese into 'new people' who would regard what was misery to a Westerner as pleasure.
I was aghast. Did he not know that repression was at its worst when there was no complaint? A hundred times more so when the victim actually presented a smiling face? Could he not see to what a pathetic condition these professors had been reduced, and what horror must have been involved to degrade them so? I did not realize that the acting that the Chinese were putting on was something to which Westerners were unaccustomed, and which they could not always decode.
I did not appreciate either that information about China was not easily available, or was largely misunderstood, in the West, and that people with no experience of a regime like China's could take its propaganda and rhetoric at face value. As a result, I assumed that these eulogies were dishonest. My friends and I would joke that they had been bought by our government's 'hospitality." When foreigners were allowed into certain restricted places in China following Nixon's visit, wherever they went the authorities immediately cordoned off enclaves even within these enclaves. The best transport facilities, shops, restaurants, guest houses and scenic spots were reserved for them, with signs reading "For Foreign Guests Only." Mao-tai, the most sought-after liquor, was totally unavailable to ordinary Chinese, but freely available to foreigners. The best food was saved for foreigners. The newspapers proudly reported that Henry Kissinger had said his waistline had expanded as a result of the many twelve-course banquets he enjoyed during his visits to China. This was at a time when in Sichuan, "Heaven's Granary," our meat ration was half a pound per month, and the streets of Chengdu were full of homeless peasants who had fled there from famine in the north, and were living as beggars. There was great resentment among the population about how the foreigners were treated like lords. My friends and I began saying among ourselves: "Why do we attack the Kuomintang for allowing signs saying "No Chinese or Dogs" aren't we doing the same?
Getting hold of information became an obsession. I benefited enormously from my ability to read English, as although the university library had been looted during the Cultural Revolution, most of the books it had lost had been in Chinese. Its extensive English-language collection had been turned upside down, but was still largely intact.”
― Jung Chang, quote from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
“The name is Salvatore. As in savior.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from The Awakening / The Struggle
“Obviously, I lied, Kiera!" he yelled back. "If you haven't noticed, I do that! And what does it matter anyway? She wanted me, you didn't. What do you care if I-"
"Because you're mine!" I yelled back at him, quite unintentionally. Of course, he wasn't actually mine ....
The immediate silence after that was deafening. Kellan's face paled and then slowly got very, very angry. "No, no I'm not! THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT!”
― S.C. Stephens, quote from Thoughtless
“She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Millennium Trilogy
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The Marvelous Land o...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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