Quotes from The Stand

“That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“A person can't change all at once.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“He smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him making him smile.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“You couldn't not like someone who liked the guitar.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Your first impulse is to share good news, your second is to club someone with it.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Love didn't grow very well in a place where there was only fear”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Sometimes [...] real love is silent as well as blind.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“She couldn't be on his wavelength all the time. That's all. When you could recognize that and deal with it, you were on your way to an adult relationship.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Nobody likes to see a stupid guy wise up.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“You just couldn't get hold of the things you had done and turn them right again. Such power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to men and women, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“The thought process can never be complete without articulation.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“God doesn't bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But... this is what God wants of you.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“It's hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else's.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is the most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“There are all sorts of dream interpretations, Freud's being the most notorious, but I have always believed they served a simple eliminatory function, and not much more - that dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

“Superstition, like true love, needs time to grow and reflect upon itself.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Stand

About the author

Popular quotes

“What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart?
It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.”
― Jean Cocteau, quote from The Holy Terrors

“Aggression hides in our culture under many names. Taxation is only an example, but one of the most widespread and uneconomical. If this concept seems incredible to you, consider the shift in awareness that it implies. Are we like children, accepting five pennies for our dime?”
― Mary J. Ruwart, quote from Healing Our World: In an Age of Aggression

“Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone.”
― Keith Ferrazzi, quote from Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

“It was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“And he no longer cared to tell which were things done and which dreamt.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.