“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about fear.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“The ladder had always held us before, we thought it would always hold us again, which is a philosophy that gets men and nations in trouble time after time.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“You're my big brother. I knew you'd take care of me.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Having a breakdown was like breaking a vase and then gluing it back together. You could never trust yourself to handle that vase again with any surety. You couldn't put a flower in it because flowers need water and water might dissolve the glue. Am I crazy, then?”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“If you want to write, you write. The only way to learn to write is by writing.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Love is the most pernicious drug of all. Let the romantics debate its existence. Pragmatists accept it and use it.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Story is something happening to someone you have been led to care about.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“I felt comfortable as only one can on such a night, when all is miserable outside and all is warmth and comfort inside.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“As we become aware of our own unavoidable termination, we become aware of the fear-emotion. And I think that, as copulation tends towards self-preservation, all fear tends towards a comprehension of the final ending.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Insofar as story is concerned, and pleasure is concerned, there are not enough Stephen Kings to go around.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“The stench in the air grew steadily stronger, and the dark about us seemed to press like wool, as if jealous of the light which had temporarily deposed it after so many years of undisputed dominion.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“She was thinking about how quietly you could grow to depend on a person, almost like a junkie with a habit.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“You may have an occasion to be traveling in southern Maine yourself one of these days. Pretty part of the countryside. You may even stop by Tookey's Bar for a drink. Nice place. They kept the name just the same. So have your drink, and then my advice to you is to keep right on moving north. Whatever you do, don't go up that road to Jerusalem's Lot. Especially not after dark. There's a little girl somewhere out there. And I think she's still waiting for her good-night kiss.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“My obsession is with the macabre. I didn't write any of the stories which follow for money, although some of them were sold to magazines before they appeared here and I never once returned a cheque uncashed. I may be obsessional but I'm not crazy. Yet I repeat: I didn't write them for money; I wrote them because it occurred to me to write them. I have a marketable obsession. There are madmen and madwomen in padded cells the world over who are not so lucky.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Ich sage nicht, daß es stimmt. Ich sage nur, daß es in einigen Ecken der Welt Dinge gibt, die einen Mann in den Wahnsinn treiben können, wenn er sie vor sich sieht.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“John Renshaw war ein Bussard in Menschengestalt, den sowohl seine Veranlagung als auch sein soziales Umfeld zu zwei Dingen mehr als zu allem anderen befähigt hatten: zu töten und zu überleben”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Mit Holzkohle Bilder zeichnen. Dies ist der Mondgott. Dies ist ein Baum. Dies ist ein Mac-Lastwagen, der einen Jäger erlegt.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“The arts are obsessional, and obsession is dangerous. It's like a knife in the mind. In some cases—Dylan Thomas comes to mind, and Ross Lockridge and Hart Crane and Sylvia Plath—the knife can turn savagely upon the person wielding it. Art is a localized illness, usually benign—creative people tend to live a long time—sometimes terribly malignant. You use the knife carefully, because you know it doesn't care who it cuts. And if you are wise you sift the sludge carefully . . . because some of that stuff may not be dead.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Bei der Therapie hatte einmal ein Mann gesagt, daß ein Nervenzusammenbruch so ähnlich sei, als wenn man eine Vase zerbricht und sie dann wieder zusammenklebt. Sie sei dann nicht mehr so wie früher, denn man müsse jetzt viel vorsichtiger mit ihr umgehen. Man könnte keine Blume mehr hineinstellen, denn Blumen brauchen Wasser, und Wasser könnte den Leim auflösen.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“She wasn't like a jukebox; you never had to put in a dime and she never came unplugged.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“It tried to fold everything,” he said to Jackson, tasting bile in his throat. “But a person isn't a sheet, Mark. What I saw . . . what was left of her . . .” Like Stanner, the hapless foreman, he could not finish. “They took her out in a basket,” he said softly.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Man kam nämlich sehr schnell auf merkwürdige Gedanken, wenn man zu lange in dieselben Gesichter sah.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Why do you choose to write about such gruesome subjects?
I usually answer this with another question: Why do you assume that I have a choice?
Writing is a catch-as-catch-can sort of occupation. All of us seem to come equipped with filters on the floors of our minds, and all the filters have differing sizes and meshes. What catches in my filter may run right through yours. What catches in yours may pass through mine, no sweat. All of us seem to have a built-in obligation to sift through the sludge that gets caught in our respective mind-filters, and what we find there usually develops into some sort of sideline.
The accountant may also be a photographer. The astronomer may collect coins. The school-teacher may do gravestone rubbings in charcoal. The sludge caught in the mind's filter, the stuff that refuses to go through, frequently becomes each person's private obsession. In civilized society we have an unspoken agreement to call our obsessions “hobbies.”
Sometimes the hobby can become a full-time job. The accountant may discover that he can make enough money to support his family taking pictures; the schoolteacher may become enough of an expert on grave rubbings to go on the lecture circuit. And there are some professions which begin as hobbies and remain hobbies even after the practitioner is able to earn his living by pursuing his hobby; but because “hobby” is such a bumpy, common-sounding little word, we also have an unspoken agreement that we will call our professional hobbies “the arts.”
Painting. Sculpture. Composing. Singing. Acting. The playing of a musical instrument. Writing. Enough books have been written on these seven subjects alone to sink a fleet of luxury liners. And the only thing we seem to be able to agree upon about them is this: that those who practice these arts honestly would continue to practice them even if they were not paid for their efforts; even if their efforts were criticized or even reviled; even on pain of imprisonment or death.
To me, that seems to be a pretty fair definition of obsessional behavior. It applies to the plain hobbies as well as the fancy ones we call “the arts”; gun collectors sport bumper stickers reading YOU WILL TAKE MY GUN ONLY WHEN YOU PRY MY COLD DEAD FINGERS FROM IT, and in the suburbs of Boston, housewives who discovered political activism during the busing furor often sported similar stickers reading YOU'LL TAKE ME TO PRISON BEFORE YOU TAKE MY CHILDREN OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD on the back bumpers of their station wagons. Similarly, if coin collecting were outlawed tomorrow, the astronomer very likely wouldn't turn in his steel pennies and buffalo nickels; he'd wrap them carefully in plastic, sink them to the bottom of his toilet tank, and gloat over them after midnight.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“almost Overnight, his Eyes are great bloodshot Circles from which the pleasing light of Sanity seems to have departed. He”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Teil einer Ehe, die in Blut vollzogen worden war.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Sie dachte daran, wie unmerklich man von einem Menschen abhängig werden konnte, wie ein Süchtiger von einer Droge.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Irgend jemand schien den Entschluß gefaßt zu haben, Gottes Worte mit der Schere zu berichtigen”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
“Da uns die Leiter bisher jedesmal gehalten hatte, glaubten wir, sie müßte uns immer halten, eine Philosophie, die Menschen und Nationen immer wieder in Schwierigkeiten bringt.”
― Stephen King, quote from Night Shift
Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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“Golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Cymbeline
“I have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty, and I have found by experience that malicious and inhuman animosity and fierceness are usually accompanied by weakness. Wolves and filthy bears, and all the baser beasts, fall upon the dying.”
― William H. Armstrong, quote from Sounder
“What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?”
― Sam Harris, quote from Free Will
“Even through his terror, Hiccup was blown away with excitement at seeing so many books in one place at one time. He had scribbled away in notebooks himself, of course, but because books were banned by order of The Thing, the only proper book he had ever really held was that copy of 'How to Train Your Dragon', which Toothless had incinerated. And he hadn't been very impressed by that particular book. Not enough words, in his opinion. But here, it was like entering a cave full of treasure. "WOW," breathed Hiccup, "if you stayed here long enough you really could find the answer to everything...”
― Cressida Cowell, quote from A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons
“I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from The Powerbook
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Confessions of a Bro...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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
