Quotes From "The Stand" By Stephen King

The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet. Stephen King

That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery. Stephen King

There’s always a choice. That’s God’s way, always will be. Your will is still free. Do as you will. There’s no set of leg-irons on you. But... this is what God wants of you. Stephen King

It don't matter if you believe in God Nick, he believes in you. Stephen King

She was satisfied with the answer God had given Moses from the burning bush when Moses had seen fit to question. Who are you? Mose asks, and God comes back from that bush just as pert as you like: I Am, Who I AM. In other words, Mose, stop beatin around this here bush and get your old ass in gear. Stephen King

He was a poet who sometimes taught Free University classes or travelled in the western states of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona, speaking to high school English classes, stunning middle-class boys and girls (he hoped) with the news that poetry was alive–narcoleptic, to be sure, but still possessed of a certain hideous vitality. Stephen King

For God’s sake, Larry, grow up. Develop a little self-righteousness. A lot of that is an ugly thing, God knows, but a little applied over all your scruples is an absolute necessity! It is to the soul what a good sunblock is to the skin during the heat of the summer. You can only captain your own soul, and from time to time some smart-ass psychologist will question your ability to even do that. Stephen King

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power. Stephen King

Thank you, Men, for the railroads. Thank you, Men, for inventing the automobile and killing the red Indians who thought it might be nice to hold on to America for a while longer, since they were here first. Thank you, Men, for the hospitals, the police, the schools. Now I'd like to vote, please, and have the right to set my own course and make my own destiny. Ince I was chattel, but now that is obsolete. My days of slavery must be over; I need to be a slave no more than I need to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny boat with sails. Jet planes are safer and quicker than little boats with sails and freedom makes more sense than slavery. I am not afraid of flying. Thank you, Men. Stephen King

No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't. Stephen King

The dancing sickness took place during the latter part of the fifteenth century. Bubonic plague--the black death--decimated Europe near the end of the fourteenth. Whooping cough near the end of the seventeenth, and the first known outbreaks of influenza near the end of the nineteenth. We've become so used to the idea of the flu--it seems almost like the common cold to us, doesn't it?--that no one but the historians seem to know that a hundred years ago it didn't exist. . Stephen King

Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or 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. Stephen King

You couldn't not like someone who liked the guitar. Stephen King

A man who loves money is a bastard, someone to be hated. A man who can't take care of it is a fool. You don't hate him, but you got to pity him. Stephen King

Women's lib, Frannie had decided, was nothing more nor less than an outgrowth of the technological society. Women were at the mercy of their bodies. They were smaller. They tended to be weaker. A man couldn't get with child, but a woman could---every four-year-old knows it. And a pregnant woman is a vulnerable human being. Civilization had provided an umbrella of sanity that both sexes could stand beneath. . Stephen King

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. Stephen King

Who gets to be best-liked in any community? Who is the most trusted? Why, the man who does the dirty job, of course, and does it with a smile. The man who does the job you couldn't bring yourself to do. Stephen King

Don't think I know you, " Harold said, grinning, as they shook. He had a firm grip. Larry's hand was pumped up and down exactly three times and let go. It reminded Larry of the time he had shaken hands with George Bush back when the old bushwhacker had been running for President. It had been at a political rally, which he had attended on the advice of his mother, given many years ago. If you can't afford a movie, go to the zoo. If you can't afford the zoo, go see a politician. . Stephen King

A person can't change all at once. Stephen King

A man who doubts himself shouldn't have to try too hard for too long, not until he's seasoned. Stephen King

She looks like the type that might freak out. It's something in the eyes, Frannie. It says if you shoot my sacred cows, I'll shoot yours. Stephen King

When certain seeds are planted, they nearly always grow. Stephen King

He had been (Thinking? Praying?) It was all the same thing. Stephen King

Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead. Stephen King

No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just... come out the other side. Stephen King

Every man or woman who loves [God], they hate Him too, because He's a hard God, a jealous God, He Is, what He Is, and in this world He's apt to repay service with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars. Even the joy of serving Him is a bitter joy. Stephen King

By the time he was done with the deer it had been dark three hours and his bad leg was singing 'Ave Maria'. Stephen King

She could smell damprot, high, sweet, and cloying. She could smell madness like dead vegetables in a dark cellar. Stephen King

He didn’t like the way things were going. There were bad omens in the wind, evil portents like bats fluttering in the dark loft of a deserted barn. Stephen King

The thought process can never be complete without articulation. Stephen King

People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad. Stephen King

. On either side of them the essence of honky tonk beach resort had now enclosed them: gas stations, fried clam stands, Dairy Treets, motels painted in feverish pastel colors, mini golf. “Larry was drawn two painful ways by these things. Part of him clamored at their sad and blatant ugliness and at the ugliness of the minds that had turned this section of a magnificent, savage coastline into one long highway amusement park for families in station wagons. But there was a more subtle, deeper part of him that whispered of the people who had filled these places and this road during other summers. Ladies in sunhats and shorts too tight for their large behinds. College boys in red and black striped rugby shirts. Girls in beach shifts and thong sandals. Small screaming children with ice cream spread over their faces. They were American people, and there was a kind of dirty, compelling romance about them whenever they were in groups never mind if the group was in an Aspen ski lodge or performing their prosaic/ arcane rites of summer along Route 1 in Maine. And now all these Americans were gone. Stephen King, from The Stand p. 303 304 . Stephen King

It's hard enough for a person to keep their own socks pulled up, let alone someone else's. Stephen King

I am not the potter, nor the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay, does it depend on the value achieved intrinsic as much as the value of the clay as the wheel and master craftsmanship? Stephen King

She saw clearly a boy and a man fighting for control of the same face. Stephen King

His name is Legion. He is the king of nowhere. Stephen King

Call me Richard. That’s my real name. Call me that. Stephen King

He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation’s equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on? Harry Blakemoor died with his tie on. I like it, Larry. Stephen King