Quotes from Revival

Stephen King ·  372 pages

Rating: (75.7K votes)


“Home is where they want you to stay longer.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“People say that where there’s life, there’s hope, and I have no quarrel with that, but I also believe the reverse.
There is hope, therefore I live.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Religion is the theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay in your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so—pardon the pun—so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“When you want to feel better, call something a piece of shit. It usually works.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“That’s how you know you’re home, I think, no matter how far you’ve gone from it or how long you’ve been in some other place. Home is where they want you to stay longer.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival



“The three true ages of man are youth, middle age, and how the fuck did I get old so soon?”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Everyone needs a hobby,” he said. “And everyone needs a miracle or two, just to prove life is more than just one long trudge from the cradle to the grave.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“We never know. Any day could be the day we go down, and we never know.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves, but they can't help it. It's the way they're built. They deserve sympathy and compassion.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“If our faith is strong, we’ll go to heaven, and we’ll understand the whole thing when we get there. As if life were a joke, and heaven the place where the cosmic punchline is finally explained to us.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival



“Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around to where it started.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“This is how we bring about our own damnation, you know-by ignoring the voice that begs us to stop. To stop while there's still time.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence? I want to believe it’s the latter. I want that with all my heart and soul. When I think of Charles Jacobs—my fifth business, my change agent, my nemesis—I can’t bear to believe his presence in my life had anything to do with fate. It would mean that all these terrible things—these horrors—were meant to happen. If that is so, then there is no such thing as light, and our belief in it is a foolish illusion. If that is so, we live in darkness like animals in a burrow, or ants deep in their hill. And not alone.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“But writing is a wonderful and terrible thing. It opens deep wells of memory that were previously capped.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die. —H. P. Lovecraft
― Stephen King, quote from Revival



“But music lasts, even pop music. Especially pop music. Sneer at ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’ if you want to, but people will still be listening to that silly piece of shit fifty years from now.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“All that shit starts in E.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“people always want a reason for the bad things in life. Sometimes there ain’t one.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“People have many ways to be lousy to one another, as you’ll find out when you’re older, but I think that all bad behavior stems from plain old selfishness.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Then they all began to sing. The tune was “Happy Birthday,” but the lyrics had changed. “Something happened . . . TO YOU! Something happened . . . TO YOU! Something happened, dear Jamie, something happened TO YOU!” That was when I began to scream.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival



“Children learn much more by mute example than by spoken rules, or so it seems to me.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don't know if it's true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“This is how we bring about our own damnation, you know—by ignoring the voice that begs us to stop. To stop while there’s still time.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“We came from a mystery and it's to a mystery we go Maybe there's something there, but I'm betting it's not God as any church understands Him. Look at the babble of conflicting beliefs and you'll know that. They cancel each other out and leave nothing. If you want truth, a power greater than yourselves, look to the lightning - a billion volts in each strike, and a hundred thousand amperes of current, and temperatures of fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. There's a higher power in that, I grant you. But here in this building? No. Believe what you want, but I tell you this: behind Saint Paul's darkened glass, there is nothing but a lie.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Talent is a spooky thing, and has a way of announcing itself quietly but firmly when the right time comes. Like certain addictive drugs, it comes as a friend long before you realize it’s a tyrant.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival



“In one way, at least, our lives really are like movies. The main cast consists of your family and friends. The supporting cast is made up of neighbors, co-workers, teachers, and daily acquaintances. There are also bit players: the supermarket checkout girl with the pretty smile, the friendly bartender at the local watering hole, the guys you work out with at the gym three days a week. And there are thousands of extras --those people who flow through every life like water through a sieve, seen once and never again. The teenager browsing a graphic novel at Barnes & Noble, the one you had to slip past (murmuring "Excuse me") in order to get to the magazines. The woman in the next lane at a stoplight, taking a moment to freshen her lipstick. The mother wiping ice cream off her toddler's face in a roadside restaurant where you stopped for a quick bite. The vendor who sold you a bag of peanuts at a baseball game. But sometimes a person who fits none of these categories comes into your life. This is the joker who pops out of the deck at odd intervals over the years, often during a moment of crisis. In the movies this sort of character is known as the fifth business, or the chase agent. When he turns up in a film, you know he's there because the screenwriter put him there. But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence? I want to believe it's the latter. I want that with all my heart and soul.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Well, you know what they say, Jamie: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“Question: Death, where is thy sting? Answer: Every-fucking-where.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


“The true world was behind it.”
― Stephen King, quote from Revival


About the author

Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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