I know nothing of God or the Devil. I have never seen a vision nor learned a secret that would damn or save my soul.

Re-telling the Christian story is the essence of my vocation. That has been going on since the Evangelists in one form or another.

I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing.

Women are one of the Almighty’s enigmas to prove to men that He knows more than they do.

There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win.

To be precise and reckless: that is the consummation devoutly to be wished.

In the prequel we’re going to tell about the characters before Left Behind, and the book would end with the rapture instead of start with the rapture like the first one did.

You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.

Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate.

I’ve seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted.

When you suffer an attack of nerves you’re being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system?

Not being known doesn’t stop the truth from being true.

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

I enjoy the Web site a lot and I like being able to talk to my readers. I’ve always had a very close relationship with them.

It’s true that it’s a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.

Doesn’t all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred...

A good deed never goes unpunished.

Tim sends me a fairly ambitious workup in notebook form noting the passages we’re going to cover and the chronology of the biblical events, and his commentaries on those things he’s read and written.

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn’t know he was a novelist. All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn’t know he was a novelist either.

I’ve never been one to tear the social fabric.

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Nothing is proved, all is permitted.

Show me an elitist, and I’ll show you a loser.

I thought The Shining was just absolutely wonderful. Stephen King reaches all kinds of people. In the beginning he was just dismissed out of hand, which was terrible.

In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them.

Do not wave stick when trying to catch dog.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Detachment produces a peculiar state of mind. Maybe that’s the worst sentence of all, to be deprived of feeling what a human being ought to be entitled to feel.

Funny, I don’t feel any more powerful today than yesterday.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

He knew a lot about his grandparents – and perhaps he feels he’s been endowed with abilities to go into people’s heads who are long dead – but, to a certain extent, he’s making it...

I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it’s such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction.

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.

If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them.

There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

The only pain in pleasure is the pleasure of the pain.

Stephen King in many respects is a wonderful writer. He has made a contribution. People in the future will be able to pick up Stephen King’s books and learn a lot about who we were...

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I’m living that story, and I don’t give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.

Violence commands both literature and life, and violence is always crude and distorted.

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies.

To have guilt you’ve got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don’t feel the guilt you ought to have. And that’s what The Firebombing is about.

It’s made me more expectant of the imminent return of Jesus, and also more sensitive to the people around me. Knowing Jesus will return soon makes me want all the more to tell people about...

I’ve always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character,...