Stephen King

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."

"It's as if God gave you something-all those stories- and said, "Here you are. Try not to lose it." But children lose everything unless somebody is there to help them, and if your parents are too stupid to do it, maybe i ought to."

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

"Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy."

"A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar."

"A little arrogance (or even a lot) isn't such a bad thing, although your mother undoubtedly told you different. Mine did. "Pride goeth before a fall, Stephen", she said... and then I found out - right around the age that is 19 x 2 - that eventually you fall down, anyway."

"A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger."

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot."

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."

"Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

"Quiet people have the loudest minds."

"To the champ, everything is serious business. I'm hoping that he'll live long enough to learn that in this world that is a very dangerous attitude."

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."

"Get busy living or get busy dying."

"When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, Why god? Why me? and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off."

"Well, luck is for fools. It's all they have to hope for, poor devils."

"One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred pound Coke machine, one need worry about little else."

"The sky was the yellow color of old cheese and the clouds flew across it, as if they had seen something horrifying in the desert wastes where they had so lately been."