Stephen King Stories Quotations

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it's going to happen.

I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils.

There are a lot of people in the field [ of horror stories] that I do read. There is a lot of stuff that is written in this field, though, that is not very good. You just have to look for the good stuff.

I like to end stories where the readers have a little room to run. They can resolve things as they like in their own mind.

Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.

I think telling stories is like pushing something. Pushing against uncreation itself, maybe.

we need ghost stories because we, in fact, are the ghosts.

The stories we hear in our childhood are the ones we remember all our lives.

But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

I'm afraid of all kinds of things. I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing - that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

Sometimes a cigar is just a smoke and a story's just a story

I never have a thematic intention at the outset. The story informs the theme for me rather than the other way around. But as it happens, this is, at least to a degree, about getting old and the rapid passage of our lives.

When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

I wanted to write a balls-to-the-wall supernatural horror story, something I haven't done in a long time.

...my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves.

Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us.

There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.

That's the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story even at the most inopportune moments.

The important question has nothing to do with whether the talk in your story is sacred or profane; the only question is how it rings on the page and in your ear. If you expect it to ring true, then you must talk yourself. Even more important, you must shut up and listen to others talk.

Remember that 'plumber in space' is not such a bad setup for a story.

Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent.

Pay and the story rolls, .. Steal and the story folds. No stealing from the blind newsboy.

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground.

Stories are like relics, part of an undiscovered preexisting world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story.

A short story is like a kiss in the dark.

When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story.

The ghost story movie that scared me the most was The Changeling with George C. Scott. I think that's sometimes overlooked, but it's a wonderful piece of work.

Politics always change. Stories never do.

Stories are artifacts, not really made things which we create and can take credit for, but pre-existing objects which we dig up.

You know," King said, "I'm not much good at telling stories. That sounds like a paradox, but it's not; it's the reason I write them down.

Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.

When I start a story, I don't know where it's going.

Without story books is like a person with no soul.

When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story.