Stephen King

Whether or not you’re a fan of his work, you have to admit — Stephen King is a pretty impressive guy. With more than 50 novels, six nonfiction books, 200 short stories, and numerous movie and TV adaptations under his belt since he started his career in 1967, he has become the face of the horror genre in America and has arguably had more influence over the genre than any other author since Edgar Allan Poe.

Even if you get the creeps at the thought of Pennywise the Dancing Clown from It or you’re still traumatized from reading Pet Sematary too late at night, King has some very interesting things to say, both in his books and in interviews — and many of these pearls of wisdom are surprisingly nonthreatening. Here are some of the most inspiring, spooky, funny and downright fascinating things to come from the mouth (or pen) of the creepiest writer of all time.

Stephen King on writing

With the amount of high-quality work King has churned out in his long career, budding writers are always looking to him for advice. However, his advice is often surprisingly simple: read all you can and avoid distractions. Or as he puts it:

“I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they ‘don’t have time to read.’ This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn’t have time to buy any rope or pitons.”

“If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

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

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings — words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.”

From his books

Many people might be surprised to find out that beyond his most popular works like The Shining and Misery, King has written many other novels that don’t feature madness or murders. However, even in some of his more deranged tales, King reflects poignantly on life. Some of King’s hidden wisdom includes:

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.” — Bag of Bones

“There’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.” — The Shawshank Redemption

“You couldn’t get hold of the things you’d done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.” — The Stand

“People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings of flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.” — Carrie

“It might be that the biggest division in the world isn’t men and women but folks who like cats and folks who like dogs.” — Everything’s Eventual

“You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.” — Hearts in Atlantis

King on himself

Though it’s easy to assume that King must be a warped, twisted individual, his quotes prove he is a normal — albeit articulate — individual. Here’s the best of King being King.

“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn’t real. I know that, and I also know that if I’m careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.” 

“My candy of choice is Junior Mints. And while I don’t bring bootleg food into the movies, I do bring bootleg toothpicks. Then, as I relax in my seat, I take a toothpick and poke five or six Junior Mints onto it. It ends the dreaded Chocolate Hand, and it’s also kind of fun to eat candy off a stick. I call them Mint-Kebabs.”

“I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries.”

“People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.”