Holly Stephen King Quotes

Holly knows this is how addicts think and behave: they rearrange the furniture of their lives to make room for their bad habits.

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.

Just when you think you’ve seen the worst human beings have to offer, you find out you’re wrong,

Gifts are fragile. You must never entrust yours to people who might break it.

She smiles. She dies. A world of words dies with her.

Sometimes the universe throws you a rope. If it does, climb it. See what's at the top.

Forty is when you have to stop kidding yourself that you’re still a young anything.

I hate it when real events screw with my fiction, but that happens from time to time.

I had a friend who used to tell me that all the time,” Holly said, and suddenly felt like crying. It was that phrase—I had a friend. Time had passed, and time probably did heal all wounds, but God, some of them healed so slowly. And the difference between I have and I had was such a gulf.

What you don’t want to do is what must be done first. Then it’s out of the way.

holder-onners are never able to understand let-goers. They are tribes that just can’t understand each other.

No Miss America, but she was a prom queen back in high school. And nobody dumped a bucket of blood on her, either.

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.

Here is another relationship chilled by the fast-talking man in the red tie. It’s not fate and not coincidence

You have to start taking care of yourself when you’re forty. You have to maintain the machinery, because there’s no trade-in option.

And nobody dumped a bucket of blood on her, either.

The work matters. Nothing else. Not prizes. Not being published. Not being rich, famous, or both. Only the work.

The older she gets, the more the resilience of the young amazes her.

She doesn’t want to watch anything on Netflix (Holly thinks most of their movies, even those with big budgets, are weirdly mediocre)

Yes. And if you don’t start calling me Ralph, Holly, I’ll have to arrest you.

there’s no more exquisite torture than hope.

holder-onners are never able to understand let-goers. They are tribes that just can’t understand each other. Sort of like vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, Trumpers and Never Trumpers.

. . . or how Terry Maitland could have been in two places at the same time. He kept coming up against those things; they were like pebbles lodged in his throat.

does anyone ever get complete closure? Especially from a parent?

my mother died of that fake flu, you gullible bitch.

Holly hangs up, washes her face in the tiny lavatory, reapplies

Old age is a time of casting away, which is bad enough, but it’s also a time of escalating indignities.

I love you, Mom,” Holly says, and ends the call. Is that true? Yes. It’s liking that got lost, and love without liking is like a chain with a manacle at each end.

I had a friend who used to tell me that all the time,” Holly said, and suddenly felt like crying. It was that phrase—I had a friend.

She checked her Fitbit again and saw her pulse was now up to one-twenty. She chugged down the rest of her latte, anyway. Living dangerously.

They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.

you think there are more like him?” After Texas, Holly would have said no. Now she cannot be sure. One is a unique number. When you have two, you may be seeing the beginning of a pattern.

One last thing. End of Watch is fiction, but the high rate of suicides—both in the United States and in many other countries where my books are read—is all too real. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline number given in this book is also real. It’s 1-800-273-TALK. If you are feeling poopy (as Holly Gibney would say), give them a call. Because things can get better, and if you give them a chance, they usually do. Stephen

Holly starts to cry. Jerome hugs her clumsily. He's black and she's white, he's seventeen and she's in her forties, but to Hodges Jerome looks like a father comforting his daughter after she came home from school and said no one invited her to the Spring Dance.

The only person unhappier than a writer whose expectations aren’t fulfilled is one whose dreams come true.

He’d like to be in a doctor’s office, waiting for a proctological exam. He would like to be anywhere but here.

TRISTIS PUELLA.

You can't write well without a grasp of profanity and the ability to look at filth. To sometimes exalt filth.

It would have been foolish and melodramatic to call it the smell of lost hope, but that was what it smelled like to Holly, just the same.

God sometimes asks us to pay up front in this life, and you paid a high cost. From now on you are going to have a good life. A blessed life.

There’s nothing else in the paper these days except Covid and people arguing about masks. Which is like people standing out in the rain and arguing about whether or not they’re getting wet.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King's Carrie, saying if you liked those you'll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King's name is mentioned.)

On her drive back to the city, Holly is nagged by the thought of her Dollar General underwear, bought new but unwashed, and it comes to her that her mother really isn’t dead after all and won’t be until Holly herself dies.

My parents warned me about horror movies Blood and guts and Stephen King. They told me to stop reading such disturbing stories Stop playing such cutthroat games But when I swapped my novels for newspapers Changed the channel from AMC to CNN My thoughts only grew darker The world only seemed icier AND I WISHED I HAD STUCK TO FICTION.

He felt feverish and a little sick to his stomach. How could a normal man in the twenty-first century accept a shape-shifting monster? If you believed in Holly Gibney’s outsider, her El Cuco, then everything was on the table. No end to the universe.

And booster vaccines are coming. First for people with bad immune systems and people over sixty-five, but I’m hearing at school that by fall it’ll be everyone.’ ‘That sounds right,’ Holly says. ‘And bonus! Trump’s gone.’ Leaving behind a country at war with itself, Holly thinks. And who’s to say he won’t reappear in 2024? She thinks of Arnie’s promise from The Terminator: ‘I’ll be back.

I arrested some bad doers when I was on the cops, some very bad doers – one was a mother who killed her three-year-old for insurance that didn’t amount to a hill of beans – but I never felt the presence of evil in any of them once they were caught. It’s like evil’s some kind of vulture that flies away once these mokes are locked up. But I felt it that day, Holly. I really did. I felt it in Brady Hartsfield.

What you’re feeling . . . and I’m feeling . . . that’s normal. Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall through until the very end. We did fall through, but we helped each other out. We’re still helping each other.” You’re helping me more, Ralph thought. You may have your problems, Holly, but you’re better at this than I am. Far better. “And you’re all right?” he asked her. “I mean, really?” “Yes. Really. And you will be.” “Message received. Call me if you hear the ice cracking under your feet.” “Of course,” she said. “And you’ll do the same. It’s how we go on.” From

ELIZABETH SIROIS WHARTON, 87, passed away peacefully on May 29, 2010, at Warsaw County Memorial Hospital. She was born on January 19, 1923, the son of Marcel and Catherine Sirois. She is survived by her brother, Henry Sirois, her sister, Charlotte Gibney, her niece, Holly Gibney, and her daughter, Janelle Patterson. Elizabeth was predeceased by her husband, Alvin Wharton, and her beloved daughter, Olivia. Private visitation will be held from 10 AM to 1 PM at Soames Funeral Home

You can just call me Holly, Tina.” She hates Ms., thinks it sounds like a mosquito buzzing around your head.

Holly inherited half a million dollars. Less after taxes, of course,

Holly is a different woman now, but traces of the old Holly still remain. And that’s okay with Hodges. After all, everyone casts a shadow. “That’s

believes in the fake flu

She was the love of my life. We had our disagreements, as married people do, but there’s a saying: ‘Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.’ And we never did.

Microwaving kills most nutrients, it’s a known fact. No

But love isn’t always support. Sometimes love is taking the supports away.

get off your ass and go knock on doors.

knows that’s not the way life works. Maybe just as well. If it did, happiness wouldn’t mean anything.

Fifty-two years is a hell of a long walk from the altar, let me tell you. And some of it’s stony. Now how can I help you?

Chi tende a conservare le cose non potrà mai capire chi invece preferisce lasciarsele alle spalle. Si tratta di due tribù diverse, per le quali non esiste un punto d'incontro.

Holly non ha dubbi che sua madre le abbia voluto bene. Tuttavia l'amore non è sempre sostegno. A volte, l'amore consiste nel toglierti tutti gli appigli.

she often thinks of a line from some old folk song: a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.

Deliciam meam amo. Lude cum matre tua. Mox domi ero. Pater tuus.

as pie de manzana.

The idea that the creative impulse is a way to get rid of poison…

Find a way. Find the images. No ideas but in things, but they must be the true things. When your eye and heart and mind are in harmony.

I doni sono fragili. Non devi mai affidarti a persone che potrebbero approfittarne per distruggerli.

La famiglia che ha un delitto di sangue in comune è la famiglia più unita che ci sia.

Sometimes the universe throws you a rope.” —Bill Hodges

At twenty, the body forgives. At forty, forgiveness is provisional at best.

In Romans it says the weak person eats only vegetables. Deuteronomy, the Lord has promised you shall eat meat. Corinthians, eat whatever is sold in the meat market.

...[T]he creative impulse is a way to get rid of poison...or a kind of creative defecation....

I’m a very curious person. Sometimes that gets me in trouble.” (Holly Gibney) “And sometimes it gets you out.” (Ralph Anderson)

See ye devils, then shall ye not see angels?” Holly says.

Christmas music spills down from the speakers, tired tunes Holly could live happily without for the rest of her life.

...Personality projection is well documented. In fact, it's the second-most-common cause of so-called demonic possession. The most common being schizophrenia...

I love Holly. It’s as simple as that. She was supposed to be a minor character in Mr. Mercedes, no more than a quirky walk-on. Instead, she stole my heart (and almost stole the book).

She’s bundled up in a parka even though it’s still in the mid-fifties at eight o’clock, because she’s down to a hundred and ten pounds (her doctor routinely scolds her about her weight) and she feels the cold. Even more than the cold, she feels the damp. Yet she stays, because there’s a poem to be had tonight, if she can just get her fingers under its lid and open it up.

Jorge vuole mantenere l’aspetto di un quarantenne anche quando compirà cinquant’anni, tuttavia il destino si fa spesso beffe di noi. Jorge Castro non arriverà neanche a compierne quarantuno.

You’re a hell of a detective, Holly.” She thanked him with her eyes lowered, and in the tentative voice of a woman who doesn’t know quite what to do with compliments. “You’re kind to say that.

Who pays the fine if I get arrested on a charge of driving while black? You?’ Holly rolls her eyes. Jerome turns to Hodges, who sighs and nods. ‘She’s right. There’s room. I’ll pay your fucking fine.

I’m a Christian, but I’m glad the man who did it is dead. Glad. And I’m glad he’s in hell. Is that awful of me?” “He’s not in hell,” Holly said. The woman recoiled as if she had been slapped. “He brings hell.

-Sono vegana. -Questo ormai l’hanno capito anche i muri, pensaci bene. È la tua ultima possibilità. -Non mentirmi, donna. Qualunque possibilità avessi era già esaurita quando mi sono risvegliata in questa cella.

Holly protested that she did not exactly believe in God, her analyst said that a vocalizing of her concerns and plans to a hypothetical higher power would help even if she didn’t. And that actually seemed to be the case.

After breakfast, Holly returned to the guest room, supposedly to pack her things. Ralph suspected she was actually giving him time and privacy to say goodbye to his wife. She had her odd quirks, did Holly Gibney, but stupid she was not.

There’s half a bottle of red left from dinner.” “Wine before bed gives me acid. You know that.” But he follows her. “Just a splash.” She gets it from the fridge and pours—a splash for him, a bit more for her. They sit facing each other.

Holly has been a movie buff all her life and has found things to enjoy even in films the critics have roasted (she believes, for example, that Stallone’s Cobra is woefully underestimated), but It’s a Wonderful Life has always made her uneasy. She can relate to George Bailey at the beginning of the film, but by the end he strikes her as someone with a serious bipolar condition who’s arrived at the manic part of his cycle. She has even wondered if, after the movie ends, he creeps out of bed and murders his whole family.

You believe that, Holly thinks. You believe it to your very soul, because you’re a holder-onner, and holder-onners are never able to understand let-goers. They are tribes that just can’t understand each other. Sort of like vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, Trumpers and Never Trumpers.

Through analysis and therapy, Holly has come to realize that her mother is almost as terrified of life as Holly herself used to be, and that her most unpleasant characteristics—her need to criticize, her need to control situations—arise from that fear. Here is a situation she can’t control.

Most cases are fragile, the way eggs are fragile. Why? Because most criminals are dopes. When it comes to doing dirt, even the ones who are smart are dopes. Otherwise they wouldn’t do dirt in the first place. So you treat a case like an egg. You crack it, you beat it, you put it in a pan with some butter. Then you make yourself a nice little omelet.

Holly paused, looking down at her hands. The nails were unpolished, but quite neat; she had quit chewing them, just as she had quit smoking. Broken herself of the habit. She sometimes thought that her pilgrimage to something at least approximating mental stability (if not genuine mental health) had been marked by the ritual casting off of bad habits. It had been hard to let them go. They were

Questa non è psichiatria. E non è neanche terapia. È poesia, mia cara. Il talento c’era già prima che ti accadessero delle cose terribili, l’hai ereditato com’è successo a tuo fratello, però, da solo, il talento gira a vuoto. Si alimenta di ogni esperienza irrisolta - anzi, di ogni trauma irrisolto - della tua vita. Di ogni conflitto. Di ogni mistero. Di ogni lato profondo del tuo carattere che trovi non solo sgradevole, ma disgustoso.

Perché il predatore di Red Bank Avenue non sceglie le sue vittime a caso, o non del tutto. Sapeva che Ellen viveva da sola. Sapeva che Cary viveva da solo. Potrebbe aver scoperto che la madre di Pete Steinman aveva un problema con l’alcol. Sapeva che Bonnie aveva rotto da poco con il fidanzato, e che i suoi rapporti con la madre erano parecchio tesi. In altre parole, il predatore disponeva di parecchie informazioni. E sceglieva i suoi bersagli.

Da sbirro ho arrestato parecchi delinquenti, parecchi brutti delinquenti, tra cui una madre che aveva ucciso il figlio di tre anni per una polizza sulla vita da quattro soldi, ma non ho mai sentito la presenza del male in nessuno di loro dopo che erano stati catturati. Pare quasi che il male sia un avvoltoio che vola via non appena i colpevoli sono dietro le sbarre. Però l'ho sentita quel giorno, Holly. L'ho sentita eccome. E proprio in Brady Hartsfield.

I think you were here. Not in the vault, but close by. Where you could smell tears when the wind was right. Where you could hear the laughter of the men or boys who pushed over Heath Holmes’s stone and then likely urinated on his grave. In spite of the day’s heat, Holly felt cold. Given more time, she might have investigated those empty places. There was no danger; the outsider was long gone from Ohio. Very likely gone from Flint City, too. She snapped four pictures:

Forty is when you have to stop kidding yourself that you’re still a young anything. If you don’t—if you subscribe to such self-actualizing bullshit as “forty is the new twenty-five”—you’re going to find yourself starting to slide. Just a little at first, but then a little more, and all at once you’re fifty with a belly poking out your belt buckle and cholesterol-busters in the medicine cabinet. At twenty, the body forgives. At forty, forgiveness is provisional at best.

Her eyes fill with tears, and when Holly sees them, she feels—in spite of all the work she’s done in therapy—a surge of resentment that’s close to hate. Maybe it is hate. She thinks of all the times she cried in her mother’s presence and was told to go to her room “until you get that out of your system.” She feels an urge to throw those very words in her mother’s face now, but gives Charlotte an awkward hug instead. As she does, she feels how close the bones lie under that thin and flabby flesh, and realizes her mother is old. How can she dislike an old woman who so obviously needs her help? The answer seems to be quite easily.

Holly looked around and saw a vault on a nearby low hill (in this part of Ohio, all the hills were low). She walked to it, gazed at the name chiseled in the granite over the lintel—GRAVES, how appropriate—and walked down the three stone steps. She peered inside at the stone benches, where one could sit and meditate on the Graves of yesteryear here entombed. Had the outsider hidden here after his filthy work was done? She didn’t believe so, because anyone—maybe even one of the vandals who had pushed over Heath Holmes’s stone—might wander over for a peek inside. Also, the sun would shine into the meditation area for an hour or two in the afternoons, giving it a bit of fugitive warmth. If the outsider was what she believed he was, he would prefer darkness.

This is not psychiatry,” Olivia says. “It is not therapy. It is poetry, my dear. The talent was there before awful things happened to you, it came with the original equipment just as your brother’s did, but talent is a dead engine. It runs on every unresolved experience—every unresolved trauma, if you like—in your life. Every conflict. Every mystery. Every deep part of your character you find not just unlikeable but loathsome.” One hand goes up and makes a fist. Barbara can tell it hurts Olivia to do that, but she does it anyway, closing her fingers tight, nails digging into the thin skin of her palm. “Keep it,” she says. “Keep it as long as you can. It’s your treasure. You will use it up and then you will have to rely on the memory of the ecstasy you once felt, but while you have it, keep it. Use it.

Charlotte didn't die of Covid, she died of stupidity.