Revival Stephen King Quotes

Home is where they want you to stay longer.

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.

When you want to feel better, call something a piece of shit. It usually works.

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.

The three true ages of man are youth, middle age, and how the fuck did I get old so soon?

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.

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.

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.

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.

We never know. Any day could be the day we go down, and we never know.

Life is a wheel, and it always comes back around to where it started.

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.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die. —H. P. Lovecraft

But writing is a wonderful and terrible thing. It opens deep wells of memory that were previously capped.

people always want a reason for the bad things in life. Sometimes there ain’t one.

Children learn much more by mute example than by spoken rules, or so it seems to me.

All that shit starts in E.

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.

Well, you know what they say, Jamie: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Question: Death, where is thy sting? Answer: Every-fucking-where.

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.

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.

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.

Curiosity is a terrible thing, but it's human.

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.

Reverend was right about one thing: people always want a reason for the bad things in life. Sometimes there ain't one.

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.

Too much knowledge isn’t good for a person. I know that now.

There’s a door in the wall. The door is covered with ivy. The ivy is dead. She waits.

Frightened people live in their own special hell.

The true world was behind it.

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.

Sometimes death is natural, a mercy that puts an end to suffering. But all too often it comes as an assassin, full of senseless cruelty and lacking any vestige of compassion.

the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days.

That morning he had awakened next to his wife, and had eaten breakfast across from his son. They talked about stuff, like people do. We never know. Any day could be the day we go down, and we never know.

The author of so many evils,” he said.

The world’s most brilliant confabulators are in asylums.

false enthusiasm does not come easily to six-year-olds … although, sad to say, it’s a skill most of us learn fairly rapidly.

We came from a mystery and it’s to a mystery we go.

Gone to serve the Great Ones, in the Null. No death, no light, no rest.

The world is hard and you can’t have everything.

There’s no tonic like an old friend.

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.

Selective memory is one of the chief sins of the old, and I don’t have time for it.

But eventually, something will happen. Something always does. And when it does... I will come to Mother.

It’s really just paint. I muse on that, sometimes, Jamie. When I can’t sleep. How a little paint can make shallow water seem deep.

In a week, you’ll take it for granted,” he said dismissively. “That’s the way it works with miracles.

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.

Sometimes I look up in spite of myself and see that the hospital wall, painted in soothing pastel yellow, has been replaced with gray stones held together by ancient mortar and covered with ivy. The ivy is dead, and the branches look like skeletal hands. The small door in the wall is hidden, Astrid was right about that, but it’s there. The voice comes from behind it, drifting through an ancient rusty keyhole.

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. Promise me you’ll never be selfish, kiddo.” I promised, but

Saint Paul was all too right about that dark glass. We look through it all our days and see nothing but our own reflections.

The fundamental difference between the sexes is this: men make assumptions, but women rarely do.

Curiosity is a terrible thing, but it’s human. So human.

When one speaks of acceptable risks, the question is always acceptable to whom?

Lecture all you want, you picked me up when I was down and I guess I owe you that, but don’t tell me about pain. Nobody knows unless they’re on the inside.

your shadow has been over me for my whole life.

He spoke with the patience of a true believer. Or a lunatic. Maybe there’s really no difference.

One of the few things I’ve learned since then about the fundamental differences between the sexes is this: men make assumptions, but women rarely do.

Books are good, and I read my share, and TV's okay if you're stuck in a motel room during a rainstorm, but for Jamie Morton, there was nothing like a movie up there on the big screen.

She was just a year old, but she had wanted me to stay longer. 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.

There were games and activities as well as sermons, because, as he pointed out regularly, most of Jesus’s preaching happened outside, and that meant there was more to Christianity than church.

When I was a teenager, I looked at over-fifties with pity and unease: they walked too slow, they talked too slow, they watched TV instead of going out to movies and concerts, their idea of a great party was hotpot with the neighbors and tucked into bed after the eleven o’clock news. But—like most other fifty-, sixty-, and seventysomethings who are in relative good health—I didn’t mind it so much when my turn came. Because the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days.

Music matters,” he told me once. “Pop fiction goes away, TV shows go away, and I defy you to tell me what you saw at the movies two years ago. 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

It’s hard for me to think of what happened next, let alone write it down, but I must, if only as a warning for anyone else who contemplates some similar experiment in damnation, and may read these words, and turn back because of them.

Nuestra casa es el sitio donde quieren que nos quedemos más tiempo.

A song on the radio can bring back the past with fierce (if mercifully transitory) immediacy: a first kiss, a good time with your buddies, or an unhappy life-passage.

Reverend was right about one thing: people always want a reason for the bad things in life. Sometimes there ain’t one.

There is hope, therefore I live.

and when I couldn’t get high, some of the days were a hundred hours long.

The three ages of the Great American Male – youth, middle age, and you look fuckin terrific.

When you’re travelling far, it’s best to travel light.

Paths cross all the time in this world of our, sometimes in the strangest places.

one speaks of acceptable risks, the question is always acceptable to whom?

It’s been nice to see you again.” Another of those things you just say, a bit of grease to keep the wheels turning,

In one way, at least, our lives really are like movies.

Home is where they want you to stay longer.  • • •

Children learn much more by mute example than by spoken rules,

The audience burst into applause and hallelujahs. I kept trying to make sense of it, and kept coming up short. Here were people who routinely used their computers to stay in touch with their friends and get the news of the day, people who took weather satellites and lung transplants for granted, people who expected to live lives thirty and forty years longer than those of their great-grandparents. Here they were, falling for a story that made Santa and the Tooth Fairy look like gritty realism.

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.

But 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.

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.

Bésame eternamente para que no tenga que ver adónde nos han llevado los años y en qué te has convertido

At such times one sees everything and remembers it all. I know from personal experience. I wish I did not.

Key of E. All that shit starts in E.

Everyone needs a miracle or two, just to prove life is more than just one long trudge from the cradle to the grave.

people change; sometimes they go up the ladder and sometimes they go down. Those descending are frequently aided by various substances,

Stamper immediately confirmed this. “I was a big sinner,” he confided to the audience. “Now, praise God, I’m just a big eater.

Cancer is the pitbull of diseases, and it had her in its jaws, biting and rending. It would not stop until it had torn her to pieces.

But here's something I bet you already know, deep down. It's your brain that's hurting, and blaming it on your leg. Brains are crafty that way.

Cara Lynne tenía solo un año, pero deseaba que me quedara más tiempo. Así es como sabemos que estamos en casa, creo, por mucho que nos hayamos alejado de ella o por más tiempo que hayamos pasado en otro lugar. Nuestra casa es el sitio donde quieren que nos quedemos más tiempo.

And what do we get for our faith? For the centuries we’ve given this church or that one our gifts of blood and treasure? The assurance that heaven is waiting for us at the end of it all, and when we get there, the punchline will be explained and we’ll say, ‘Oh yeah! Now I get it.’ That’s the big payoff. It’s dinned into our ears from our earliest days: heaven, heaven, heaven! We will see our lost children, our dear mothers will take us in their arms! That’s the carrot.

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. Promise me you’ll never be selfish, kiddo.

La religión es el equivalente teológico de los seguros fraudulentos, en los que uno paga la prima un año tras otro, y un día, cuando necesita las prestaciones por las que ha pagado tan… y perdón por el juego de palabras… religiosamente, descubre que la compañía que ha aceptado su dinero en realidad no existe.

I think most people who have suffered great losses in their lives—great tragedies—come to a crossroads. Maybe not right then, but when the shock wears off. It may be months later; it may be years. They either expand as a result of their experience, or they contract. If that sounds New Age-y—and I suppose it does—I don’t apologize. I know what I’m talking about.

He smiled. “Did you know that the staff involved in the Manhattan Project shrank steadily before the first A-bomb test at White Sands?” I shook my head. “By the time the bomb went off, several of the prefab dormitories built to house the workers were empty. Here’s a little-known rule about scientific research: as one progresses toward one’s ultimate goal, support requirements tend to shrink.

In 1963, before the Beatles burst on the scene, a brief but powerful infatuation with folk music gripped America. The TV show that came along at the right time to capitalize on the craze was Hootenanny, featuring such Caucasian interpreters of the black experience as the Chad Mitchell Trio and the New Christy Minstrels. (Perceived commie Caucasians like Pete Seeger and Joan Baez were not invited to perform.)

Other players and at least one great composer—Beethoven—had lived with deafness, but hearing loss wasn’t where Hugh’s woes ended. There was the vertigo, the trembling, the periodic loss of vision. There was nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, galloping pulse. Worst of all was the almost constant tinnitus. He had always thought deafness meant silence. This was not true, at least not in his case. Hugh Yates had a constantly braying burglar alarm in the middle of his head.

I thought of kissing Astrid under the fire escape. I thought of Norm’s rusty microbus and of his father, Cicero, sitting on the busted-down sofa in his old trailer, rolling dope in Zig-Zag papers and telling me if I wanted to get my license first crack out of the basket, I’d better cut my fucking hair. I thought of playing teen dances at the Auburn RolloDrome, and how we never stopped when the inevitable fights broke out between the kids from Edward Little and Lisbon High, or those from Lewiston High and St. Dom’s; we just turned it up louder. I thought of how life had been before I realized I was a frog in a pot. I shouted: “One, two, you-know-what-to-do!” We kicked it in. Key of E. All that shit starts in E.

In 2012, I turned fifty-six. Hugh and his longtime girlfriend took me out to dinner. On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore—probably you’ve heard it—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. When I was a teenager, I looked at over-fifties with pity and unease: they walked too slow, they talked too slow, they watched TV instead of going out to movies and concerts, their idea of a great party was hotpot with the neighbors and tucked into bed after the eleven o’clock news. But—like most other fifty-, sixty-, and seventysomethings who are in relative good health—I didn’t mind it so much when my turn came. Because the brain doesn’t age, although its ideas about the world may harden and there’s a greater tendency to run off at the mouth about how things were in the good old days. (I was spared that, at least, because most of my so-called good old days had been spent as a full-bore, straight-on-for-Texas drug addict.) I think for most people, life’s deceptive deliriums begin to fall away after fifty. The days speed up, the aches multiply, and your gait slows down, but there are compensations. In calmness comes appreciation, and—in my case—a determination to be as much of a do-right-daddy as possible in the time I had left. That meant ladling out soup once a week at a homeless shelter in Boulder, and working for three or four political candidates with the radical idea that Colorado should not be paved over.

That's bullshit, buddy. And you know it. The trouble was, he DIDN'T know it. He had come face to face with something Susannah had found out for herself after shooting the bear: he could TALK about how he didn't want to be a gunslinger, how he didn't want to be tramping around this crazy world where the three of them seemed to be the only human life, that what he really wanted more than anything else was to be standing on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, popping his fingers, munching a chili-dog, and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival blast out of his Walkman earphones as he watched the girls go by, those ultimately sexy New York girls with their pouty go-to-hell mouths and their long legs in short skirts. He could talk about those things until he was blue in the face, but his heart knew other things. It knew that he had ENJOYED blowing the electronic menagerie back to glory, at least while the game was on and Roland's gun was his own private handheld thunderstorm. He had ENJOYED kicking the robot rat, even though it had hurt his foot and even though he had been scared shitless. In some weird way, that part--the being scared part--actually seemed to add to the enjoyment. All that was bad enough, but his heart knew something even worse: that if a door leading back to New York appeared in front of him right now, he might not walk through it. Not, at least, until he had seen the Dark Tower for himself. He was beginning to believe that Roland's illness was a communicable disease.