71 Misery Quotes by Stephen King

This post may contain affiliate links. Read more here.

Stephen King’s novel “Misery” is a psychological thriller that explores themes of obsession, creativity, and the power of the mind. The quotes from the novel provide insight into the characters’ thoughts and emotions, and offer commentary on the human condition.

Writers naturally have a way with words and, as a lover of words and literature, I wanted to share these quotes on my blog because of their meaningful and powerful messages. I hope you will enjoy reading them!

Now let’s talk a little about the novel, Misery, its overreaching theme, and the importance of these quotes.

In the novel “Misery,” Stephen King explores the themes of creativity, isolation, and the power of the mind. Through the experiences of the protagonist, Paul Sheldon, we see the destructive nature of obsession and the importance of facing our fears. These quotes reflect the novel’s exploration of the human condition, and the power of the written word to heal and inspire.

One of the key themes in “Misery” is the destructive nature of obsession. The protagonist, Paul Sheldon, is held captive by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes, who becomes increasingly obsessed with him as the story progresses. Stephen King Misery quotes that touch on this theme, such as “The truth is that we all have a little bit of Annie Wilkes in us,” serve to remind the reader of the dangers of becoming too invested in something or someone.

Misery by Stephen King

King’s novel delves into the mind of a famous author, who is kidnapped and held captive by his number one fan and how it changes his life forever. The novel gives readers a glimpse into the creative process and the sacrifices that artists make in order to create. It is a powerful and thought-provoking read that is sure to stay with you long after you have finished it.

Another important theme in the novel is the power of the imagination. The quotes that explore this theme, such as “The only thing more powerful than fear is imagination,” highlight the importance of the imagination in helping us to cope with difficult situations and to see the world in a new light.

The novel also delves into the creative process and the sacrifices that artists make in order to create. Stephen King Misery Quotes, such as “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else” and “The beauty of artistic words is that they can make the unbearable bearable,” give readers a glimpse into the mind of a writer and the importance of art in our lives.

I hope you will enjoy the following list of Stephen King’s Misery quotes!

In love with literature? Try audio books or writing classes
for free for 30 days.✨

Misery Quotes by Stephen King

“Writers remember everything…especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“I am your number one fan.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“There may be fairies, there may be elves, but God helps those who help themselves.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He lay back, put his arm over his eyes, and tried to hold onto the anger, because the anger made him feel brave. A brave man could think. A coward couldn’t.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“When you own a piano, it’s harder to think about moving.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“I am in trouble here. This woman is not right.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“dirty birdy” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Can I? Yeah. You bet I can. There’s a million things in this world can’t do. Couldn’t hit a curve ball, even back in high school. Can’t fix a leaky faucet. Can’t roller-skate or make an 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 you 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.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“In a book, all would have gone according to plan… but life was so ****ing untidy — what could you say for an existence where some of the most crucial conversations of your life took place when you needed to take a shit, or something? An existence where there weren’t even any chapters?” ― Stephen King, Misery

“As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light. As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a brick wall. As always, the marvelous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He felt as he always did when he finished a book — queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Confucius say if man want to grow one row of corn, first must shovel one ton of shit.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The gotta, as in: “I think I’ll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this chapter comes out.” Even though the guy who says it spent the day at work thinking about getting laid and knows the odds are good his wife is going to be asleep when he finally gets up to the bedroom. The gotta, as in: “I know I should be starting supper now — he’ll be mad if it’s TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends.” I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will he catch the shitheel who killed his father. I gotta know if she finds out her best friend’s screwing her husband. The gotta. Nasty as a hand-job in a sleazy bar, fine as a ****, from the world’s most talented call-girl. Oh boy it was bad and oh boy it was good and oh boy in the end it didn’t matter how rude it was or how crude it was because in the end it was just like the Jacksons said on that record — don’t stop til you get enough.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The shuddering would not stop. The pain was like the end of the world. He thought: There comes a point when the very discussion of pain becomes redundant. No one knows there is pain the size of this in the world. No one. It is like being possessed by demons.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Writing does not cause misery, it is born of misery. – Montaigne” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He had discovered that there was not just one God but many, and some were more than cruel — they were insane, and that changed all. Cruelty, after all, was understandable. With insanity, however, there was no arguing.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Africa. That bird came from Africa. But you mustn’t cry for that bird, Paulie, because after a while it forgot about how the veldt smelled at noonday, and the sounds of the wildebeests at the waterhole, and the high acidic smell of the ieka-ieka trees in the great clearing north of the Big road. After awhile it forgot the cerise color of the sun dying behind Kilimanjaro. After awhile it only knew the muddy, smogged-out sunsets of Boston, that was all it remembered and all it wanted to remember. After awhile it didn’t want to go back anymore, and if someone took it back and set it free it would only crouch in one place, afraid and hurting and homesick in two unknown and terribly ineluctable directions until something came along and killed it. ‘Oh Africa, oh, shit,’ he said in a trembling voice.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Only a silly person would try to start a good work with a bad tool.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Such an ego simply forbade certain lines of thought.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“When you lived in the funhouse, the laff riot just never stopped.” ― Stephen King, Misery“She was crazy but he needed her. Oh I am in so much trouble he thought, and stared blindly up at the ceiling as the droplets of sweat began to gather on his forehead again.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“and then woe is you, Pauly. Woe to the max.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He didn’t need a psychiatrist to point out that writing had its autoerotic side — you beat a typewriter instead of your meat, but both acts depended largely on quick wits, fast hands and a heartfelt commitment to the art of the farfetched.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“In case you didn’t know it, friend, the Weather Bureau can post tornado warnings, but when it comes to telling exactly when and where they’ll touch down, they don’t know ****-all.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Not being sure of things, he knew, was a charmless corner of purgatory reserved for writers who were driving fast with no idea at all where they were going.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Without his even being aware that it was happening, Paul’s face rearranged itself into the expression of sincere concentration he always wore while listening to editors. He thought of this as his Can I Help You, Lady? expression. That was because most editors were like women who drive into service stations and tell the mechanic to fix whatever it is that’s making that knocking sound under the hood or going wonk-wonk inside the dashboard, and please have it done an hour ago. A look of sincere concentration was good because it flattered them, and when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The work, the pride in your work, the worth of the work itself…all those things faded away to the magic-lantern shades they really were when the pain got bad enough.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The pain wasn’t tidal. That was the lesson of the dream which was really a memory. The pain only appeared to come and go. The pain was like the piling, sometimes covered and sometimes visible, but always there.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“I thought you were good, but you are not good. You are just a lying old dirty birdie.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“In the dark, rationality seemed stupid and logic a dream. In the dark he thought with his skin.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“His so-****ing-vivid imagination rarely gave him the horrors, but when it did, God help him. God help him once it was warmed up. It was not only warmed up now, it was hot and running on full choke. That there was no sense at all in what he was thinking made not a whit of difference in the dark. In the dark, rationality seemed stupid and logic a dream. In the dark he thought with his skin.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Writing may be masturbatory, but God forbid it should be an act off autocannibalism.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The thought that grieving for a fictional character was absurd did more than cross his mind during his tossings and turnings. For grieving was exactly what he was doing, of course.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Art consists of the persistence of memory.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Annie Wilkes was the perfect audience, a woman who loved stories without having the slightest interest in the mechanics of making them. She was the embodiment of that Victorian archetype, Constant Reader.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“How its heart beats! How it struggles to get away! As we do, Paul. As we do. We think we know so much, but we really don’t know any more than a rat in a trap—a rat with a broken back that thinks it still wants to live.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Writing may be masturbatory, but God forbid it should be an act of autocannibalism.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The proverb says revenge is a dish best eaten cold, but Ronson Fast-Lite had yet to be invented when they made that one up.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Because writers remember everything, Paul. Especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels, not amnesia. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is that ability to remember the story of every scar.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“I was really coming back from my Laughing Place. It has a sign over the door that says that. ANNIE’S LAUGHING PLACE, it says. Sometimes I do laugh when I go there. “But mostly I just scream.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“All your fancy ideas come down to one thing – you want to kill her by remote control , you don’t want her blood on your hands. You’re like a man who loves nothing better than a thick steak but wouldn’t last an hour in a slaughterhouse. But listen , Paulie , and get it straight: you must face reality at this point in your life if at no other. Nothing fancy. No curlicues. Right? Right.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“That was it. In Annie’s view all the people in the world were divided into three groups: brats, poor poor things… and Annie.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“You think I was born yesterday,’ she said. Her lips drew back from her teeth. ‘In my job I saw dozens of people die – hundreds, now that I think about it. Sometimes they go screaming and sometimes they go in their sleep – they just slip away, the way you said, sure’. ‘But characters in storis DO NOT just slip away! God takes us when He thinks it’s time and a writer is God to the people in the story, …, But as far as Misery goes I’ll tell you one thing you dirty bird, I’ll tell you that God just happens to have a couple of broken legs and God just happens to be in MY house eating MY food and … and …” ― Stephen King, Misery

“by Annie Wilkes… If you can get into that chair all by yourself, Paul, she said at last, then I think you can fill in your f* n’s. She then closed the door and locked it again. Paul sat looking at it for a long time, almost as if there was something to see. He was too flabberghasted to do anything else.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Now that he was dead, Paul could look at him. The cop looked like a big doll that has been badly treated by a gang of nasty children.” ― Stephen King, Misery“But nothing had ever spoiled it, somehow. It could be spoiled, he knew that, but in spite of the reputed fragility of the creative act, it had always been the single toughest thing, the most abiding thing, in his life – nothing had ever been able to pollute that crazy well of dreams: no drink, no drug, no pain.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Find the hole in the paper.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to a cancer patient.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“It’s always wise to check your maybes.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“but life was so ****ing untidy—” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Yet he could not tell Annie that, and not just because it might rile her up. He could not tell her because it would hurt her badly, and in spite of all the pain she had afforded him, he found he could not hurt her in that way. He had been hurt way himself.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The two things are like apples and oranges, Annie. People who tell stories usually can’t write stories.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“being raped back into life by the woman’s stinking breath.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“It was a famous old hotel called the Overlook. It burned down ten years ago. The caretaker burned it down. He was crazy. Everybody in town said so. But never mind: he’s dead.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He felt as he always did when he finished a book—queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity. It was always the same, always the same—like toiling uphill through jungle and breaking out to a clearing at the top after months of hell only to discover nothing more rewarding than a view of a freeway—with a few gas stations and bowling alleys thrown in for good behavior, or something.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“A brave man could think. A coward couldn’t.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He remembered sitting down. As always, the blessed relief of starting, a feeling that was like falling into a hole filled with bright light. As always, the glum knowledge that he would not write as well as he wanted to write. As always, the terror of not being able to finish, of accelerating into a blank wall. As always, the marvellous joyful nervy feeling of journey begun.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“I’m your number one fan – Annie Wilkes” ― Stephen King, Misery

“A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is that ability to remember the story of every scar.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“How its heart beats! How it struggles to get away! As we do, Paul. As we do. We think we know so much, but we really don’t know any more than a rat in a trap—a” ― Stephen King, Misery

“The climate inside her, he had come to discover, was like springtime in the Midwest. She was a woman full of tornadoes waiting to happen, and if he had been a farmer observing a sky which looked the way Annie’s face looked right now, he would have at once” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Now it’s at peace.” She shrugged, then laughed. “I’ll get my gun, Paul, shall I? Maybe the next world is better. For rats and people both—not that there’s much difference between the two.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Depressives kill themselves. Psychotics, rocked in the poison cradles of their own egos, want to do everyone handy a favor and take them along.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“it was all right to hope and noble to strive, but in the end it was doom alone which would count.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“He felt gladness roar through his soul.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“When a manic-depressive personality begins to slide deeply into a depressive period, he had written, one symptom he or she may exhibit is acts of self-punishment: slapping, punching, pinching, burning one’s self w/ cigarette butts,” ― Stephen King, Misery

“If you promise to be good Paul you can have a piece of birthday cake but you won’t have to eat any of the special candle so he promised to be good because he didn’t want to be forced to eat any of the special candle but also because mostly because surely because Annie was great Annie was good let us thank her for our food including that we don’t have to eat girls just wanna have fun but something wicked this way comes please don’t make me eat my thumb Annie the mom Annie the goddess when Annie’s around you better stay honest she knows when you’ve been sleeping she knows when you’re awake she knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goddess’ sake you better not cry you better not pout but most of all you better not scream don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream don’t He” ― Stephen King, Misery

“Paul remembered an essay by Edmund Wilson where Wilson had said, in typically grudging Wilson manner, that Wordsworth’s criterion for the writing of good poetry—strong emotion recalled in a time of tranquillity—would do well enough for most dramatic fiction as well. It was probably true. Paul had known writers who found it impossible to write after so much as a minor marital spat, and he himself usually found it impossible to write when upset. But there were times when a kind of reverse effect obtained—these were times when he had gone to the work not just because the work ought to be done but because it was a way to escape whatever was upsetting him.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“… when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.” ― Stephen King, Misery

“In a weird way it was just too good to put down. It was like a novel so disgusting you just have to finish it.” ― Stephen King, Misery

Thank you for reading these Stephen King Misery quotes! Happy reading! ❤️