"Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, did you ever notice that?" - end of chapter 32, The Body (Stand By Me)
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?" - end of chapter 11, The Body (Stand By Me)
"Oh yes, we all float - and when you're down here with us, you'll float too!" - Pennywise the Clown at various stages in It.
"Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to" - Vera Donovan, in Dolores Claiborne.
"In vain he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts" - Bill Denborough at various stages in It.
`The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed' - opening line of Dark Tower I - The Gunslinger
"Either get busy living or get busy dying" - Andy, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
"I hope the Pacific is as blue as is has been in my dreams. I hope." - Red, the end of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
`Dolorously, Termont's voice floated back: "Smells like shit. Oh God, that's what it is, it's shit, oh my God lemme outta here I'm gonna blow my groceries oh shit it's shit oh my Gawwwwwd -" And then came the unmistakable sound of Rory Termont losing his last couple of meals.' p93 in my copy of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (The Shawshank Redemption) (My copy runs from page 11-113)
"Sometimes, dead is bettah" - Jud Crandall, Pet Sematary
"The soil of a man's heart is stonier [...] A man grows what he can... and he tends it" - Jud Crandall, Chapter 22 (near end) Pet Sematary
"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." - Stephen King, in the foreword of Night Shift.
`Jack Torrance thought : Officious little prick' - Start of The Shining
"That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery." - Larry Underwood, The Stand
`When asked,"How do you write ?" I invariably answer, "one word at a time.' - Stephen King
"You ain't no nice guy!" - Maria the Oral Hygienist to Larry Underwood, The Stand, about halfway through Chapter 10 (Complete & Uncut Edition).
`He looked fixedly at the rat for a long time before letting the mattress fall back, mercifully hiding it from sight. "Just in case," Lloyd Henreid whispered into the silence. "Just in case, is all."' - The Stand (C&U), end of Chapter 32.
"Hey Traschan, whydja want to burn up a church? Why dintcha burn up the SCHOOL?" - The Stand (C&U), about 4 pages into chapter 34.
"Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home." - Glen Bateman, The Stand (C&U), 3rd paragraph of Chapter 42.
`"You're nothing!" Glen said, wiping his streaming eyes and still chuckling. "Oh pardon me...it's just that we were all so frightened...we made such a business out of you...I'm laughing as much at our own foolishness as at your regrettable lack of substance..."' - Glen Bateman to Randall Flagg, The Stand (C&U), about the middle of Chapter 73.
`And, when the hand touched his shoulder again, he somehow found the strength to run.' - The Long Walk, (The Bachman Books, p. 434)
"There are some huge rats in the walls, by the sound." - Boone, Jerusalem's Lot (Night Shift)
`It Is The Tale, Not He Who Tells It.' - The Breathing Method
"Good old Wolf right here and now!" - Wolf, The Talisman, p269
`Cujo knew he was too old to chase rabbits.' - Cujo, p17 Viking Hardcover
"She [Susan] is very lovely, Mr. Mears - very toothsome if I may be permitted a small bon mot." Barlow's note left to Ben & co. pg 345 'Salem's Lot.
"You may not know it, but shape-changing is a time-honored custom in Derry." - The Crimson King, Insomnia p713.
"You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down." - Thad Beaumont, The Dark Half, p226.
"It's a long walk back to Eden, dear, so don't sweat the small stuff." - Carolyn (remembered by Ralph), Insomnia.
`Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.' - Closing lines of The Stand.
"I've given up thinking - it keeps getting me into trouble." - Clark, You Know They've Got A Hell Of A Band in Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
"Don't tell me," Johnny said, "It's some new variation of est therapy. A symbolic affirmation expressly designed for stressful life-passages, sort of an `I'm okay, you're stomped to shit' kind of thing." - Johnny Marinville, Desperation Part IV, Chapter 5, Section 2.
"Atonement was powerful; it was the lock on the door you closed against the past." - The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix (Green Mile book 4), p71.
"Hey-ho, let's go!" - Louis Creed, Pet Sematary.
"Oz the Gweat and Tewwible" - Esmerelda, Pet Sematary.
"It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor." - Cujo, second to last paragraph.
"'Jail,' the big cop said in his stuff, liquid voice. 'Where anything you bray will be abused against you in a sort of caw.'" - Collie Entragian, Desperation, Book 1, chapter 5.2.4
"A good old-fashion creepy-crawler...reads like a bestseller to me." - Stephen King.
"Do you think the Indians will ever win another Series?" - Steve to David in Desperation.
"No great loss." - The Stand, chapter 38.
"What kind of world was it where God would trap a person like a bug in a puddle of gasoline? A world that deserved to burn, that was what." - The Stand, chapter 34.
"There's a storm coming; his storm." - Abagail Freemantle, The Stand.
"'They'll grind you down.'he whispered. He threw the pencil halves on the floor. He looked at them, then looked up at me. His face was strange and greif-stunned. It made me uncomfortable. 'They'll grind you down too,Charlie. Wait and see if they don't." - Pigpen, Rage.
"Yeah," Garraty babbled. "We're gonna be Mr. and Mrs Norman Normal, four kids and a collie dog, his legs, he didn't have any legs, they ran over him, they can't run OVER a guy, that isn't in the rules, somebody ought to report that, somebody..." - Ray Garraty, The Long Walk.
"Can I? Yeah. You bet I can. There's a million things in this world I can't do. Couldn't hit a curveball, even back in high school. Can't fix a leaky faucet. Can't roller skate or amke a F-chord on the guitar that sounds like anything but shit. I have tried twice to be married and couldn't do it either time. But if you want me to take tou away, to scare you or involve you or make you cry or grin, yeah. I can. I can bring it to you and keep bringing it until you holler uncle. I am able. I can." - Paul Sheldon, Misery Part 2, chapter 4.
Do you love? - Nona (first line), Skeleton Crew.
"She was like that woman drivin the moon across the sky, halfway up over the splashboard with her gossamer stoles all flyin out behind her in silver cobwebs and her hair streamin back to show the dark little hollows of her temples, lashin those horses and tellin me to get along faster and never mind how they blowed, just faster, faster, faster." - Homer Buckland in Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, Skeleton Crew.
"I sit on the bench in front of Bell's Market and think about Homer Buckland and about the beautiful girl who leaned over to open his door when he come down that path with the full red gasoline can in his right hand - she looked like a girl of no more than sixteen, a girl on her learner's permit, and her beauty was terrible, but I believe it would no longer kill the man it turned itself on; for a moment her eyes lit on me, I was not killed, although a part of me died at her feet." - Dave in Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, Skeleton Crew.
"Christ, I'm hungry." - Richard Pine in Survivor Type, Skeleton Crew.
'Fornit Some Fornus' - Reg Thorpe and Henry in The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, Skeleton Crew.
"Can he carry a tune, Curt?" - Brutal Howell to Curtis Anderson about Will Wharton singing about Delacroix's death on p.265 of the complete edition of "The Green Mile".
"We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long." - Paul Edgecombe, the final line of "The Green Mile".
"This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain.And the electric chair was there, too, of course." - Paul Edgecombe, the opening line of "The Green Mile".
"I couldn't help it, boss, I tried to take it back, but it was too late." - John Coffey, last line of Chapter 2 in "The Two Dead Girls", Part One of "The Green Mile.
"John Coffey, like the drink, only spelled different." - Several characters at several times in "The Green Mile".
"I'm sorry for what I am." - John Coffey's last words in "The Green Mile".
"As Confucious once said, five hundred million Red Chinese don't give a shit." - King, last page of the Afterword in The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger.
"The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would some day come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final "I think that real friendship always makes us feel such sweet gratitude, because the world almost always seems like a very hard desert, and the flowers that grow there seem to grow against such high odds." - Eyes of the Dragon, Chapter 69.
"The world is coming down around our ears and you're sticking at a few vampires." - Ben Mears, 'Salem's Lot, Part 2, Chapter 5.
"The night before, Matt Burke had faced such a dark thing and had been stricken by a heart seizure brought on by fright; tonight Mark Petrie had faced one, and ten minutes later lay in the lap of sleep, the plastic cross still grasped loosely in his right hand like a child's rattle. Such is the difference between men and boys." - 'Salem's Lot, Part 2, Chapter 13.
"Maybe that's why God made us kids first and built us close to the ground, because He knows you got to fall down a lot and bleed a lot before you learn that one simple lesson. You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for... and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you." - Ben Hanscom, IT, Part 1 (The Shadow Before), Chapter 3 (Six Phone Calls), subchapter 3 (Ben Hanscom takes a drink).
"M-O-O-N, that spells (insert anything you want)". Laws, yes."-Tom Cullen, at any point in The Stand.
"You don't f**k around with the infinite." - IT, (Quoting "Mean Streets")
"Be brave. Be true. Stand." - Bill Denborough, IT
"Chud, this Chud, stand, be brave, be true, stand for your brother, your friends: believe, believe in all the things you have believed in... believe that courage is possible and words will come smoothlyevery time; no more losers... believe in yourself, believe in the heat of that desire." - The Turtle, Chapter 22, IT.
"The magic exists" - Stephen King, Dedication to IT.
"Take a flying f**k at a rolling donut." - Probably from Tommyknockers, not sure.
"There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know." - The Stand (Uncut), Chapter 55 p. 799.
"God said take what you want...and pay for it." - Johnny Marinville, Desperation
"God is cruel, sometimes he makes you live." - Desperation
"God is love." - David Carver, Desperation
"No matter how much you shake and dance you still get two drops in your pants" - Johnny Marinville, Desperation
"Crazy as a shit house rat" - Night Shift
"He was a loser, you know. Every high school has to have at least two: it's like a national law. One male, one female. Everyone's dumping ground." - Christine, narration, Prologue
"Regina... managed to look aristocratic even when she was wearing bluejeans, which was most of the time." - Christine, narration, Part 1, Chapter 2
"I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids." - Christine, Arnie, Part 1, Chapter 3
"Because as soon as you have a kid, you know for sure that you're going to die." - Christine, Arnie, Part 1, Chapter 3
"If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die." - Christine, narration, Part 1, Chapter 5
"For want of a nail the kingdom was lost." - Eyes of the Dragon, page before the main story starts.
"The beast is loose in the streets of Bethlehem, the rats are in the corn." - Abagail Freemantle (The Stand)
"I'm 106 years old and still make my own bread." - Abagail Freemantle (The Stand)
"I waited and watched for him for seven years. I saw him come and go, Dolan." opening sentence, Dolan's Cadillac, Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
"It's trouble and it's in our road." (Wizard and Glass, p104 and 233.)
"There'll be water if God wills it." - Roland (Wizard and Glass, p104)
"Understand Death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you." Mark Petrie, 'Salem's Lot, p139
"Miss Margitan...was the National Honors Society advisor at LHS, and when my name came up on the cantidate list two years later, she vetoed me. The Honors Soceity did not need 'boys of his type', she said. I have come to believe she was right. A boy who once wiped his ass with poison ivy probably doesn't belong in a smart people's club." C.V. chapter 19, On Writing.
"Go then, there are other worlds than these." - Jake Chalmers, (The Gunslinger, Dark Tower)