Stephen King on Writing Quotes

The scariest moment is just before you start.

If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

Writing is about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

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.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

The scariest fiction always has a kernel of truth.

The best stories don’t come from ‘good vs. bad’ but ‘good vs. good.’

Your job isn’t to find these ideas, but to recognize them when they show up.

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

There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky.

Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Bestselling Premise where every day is a good writing day. There is only one place to look for plot ideas: inside your own mind.

Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?

It’s better to be good than to be original.

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

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

I’ve always believed in a sort of magic. You get stories read to you when you’re little and you hope to tell them yourself one day. I’d just believed I’d be little longer.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

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

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Good books don’t give up all their secrets at once.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

We are writers, my friend; we never take a day off.

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.

I am, after all, an entertainer, and if I entertain a little better than the next man, in most cases the reader will buy the next book.

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.

Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter.

You can’t please all of the readers all of the time; you can’t please even some of the readers all of the time, but you really ought to try to please at least some of the readers some of the time.

Writing is not 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.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.

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.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

Writing is like telepathy. We write words, our readers read them and, at the same time, an image forms in their minds.

If you’re just starting out as a writer, ‘You should learn to live with rejection.’

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

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

You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks.

Coming up with a thousand clever lines, or even just a few, is part of the horror of writing a novel.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free, so drink.

Questions are the wrong shape for answers.

You can’t go home again.

But what writing really is, I think, is the creative expression of my own subconscious mind – which is something every human has, but which only a novelist manages to express.

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.