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Quote of the week

 

It's the same corner DEKE just came around. Now an ice-cream panel truck with jolly balloons and pictures of Fudgsicles and ice cream cones painted on it comes around the corner. The SOUND of bells tinkling a tune is coming from the speakers on top of the truck. MY-T TAS-T, the signs on both sides read.

The red stuff splattered all over the grille and windshield of the truck is not cherry Kool-Ade. The ice-cream truck has scrubbed maybe twenty people – we may assume most were unsuspecting kids. I think we may also assume the truck found most of them My-T Tas-T.

 

[from “Overdrive” – Screenplay]

 

© by Stephen King

 

 

 

Previous Quotes

 

In the morning my stomach has settled a little but my diaphragm is sore from vomiting and my head is throbbing like a mouthful of infected teeth. My eyes have turned into magnifying glasses; the hideously bright morning light coming in through the hotel windows is being concentrated by them and will soon set my brains on fire.

Participating in that day's scheduled activities – a walk to Times Square, a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty, a climb to the top of the Empire State Building – is out of the question. Walking? Urk. Boats? Double urk. Elevators? Urk to the fourth power.

 

[from “On Writing”]

 

 

*****

 

The town slept.

The cities sleep uneasily, like paranoiacs who spend their days in fear and their exhausted nights fleeing crooked shadows to that final hotel room where, as Auden says, it has been waiting all the time under one naked lightbulb. Their sleep is marred by the rising screams of the squad-car sirens, by the endless neon, by taxis that cruise restlessly like yellow wolves. Their sleep is sweating, fearful, yet vital.

But the town sleeps like a stone, like the dead.

[…]

Yet it did not sleep quite so completely as it had, because on the hill above town the lights shone from the Marsten House, as if the eye of the dark itself had opened and disclosed a fearful yellow pupil.

 

[ a deleted scene from “Second Coming”, taken from the Illustrated Edition of “’Salem’s Lot” – which I lovingly refer to as “’Salem’s Lot Reloaded” :-) ]

 

 

*****

 

 

SCULLY

I was on vacation. Out of my own head for a few days.

(beat)

How bout you? Did you get a lot done without me around?

 

MULDER

Oh, yeah. It's amazing what I can accomplish without incessant questioning and meddling into everything I do --

 

As he says this, A PENCIL falls from the sky. Literally. Falling down into frame and landing on Mulder's desk. And then a second one. Scully stares at this, then at Mulder, then looking up to:

 

THE CEILING

Where about 50 pencils are stuck into the ceiling. CAMERA PANNING BACK DOWN TO MULDER. Reaching for one of the pencils.

 

MULDER

There's got to be an explanation.

 

SCULLY

I don't know. Some things are better left unexplained.

 

 

[from "Chinga" (The X-Files 5X10) - Teleplay]

 

*****

 

 

True. If I sort of felt like strangling her all over again, it was nobody’s fault but my own. Peek not through a keyhole, lest ye be vexed, my dear old mother used to say. I peeked, I was vexed, end of story. It was her life now, and what she did in it was her business. My business was to drop it. My question was whether or not I could. It was harder than snapping your fingers; even than snapping the fingers of a hand that wasn’t there.

 

THE LIVES OF OTHERS

It's about eavesdropping, but for once not about the people who are being listened to. This one is about the listener: party hack Gerd Wiesler, brilliantly played by Ulrich Mühe, who died much too soon. "Peek not at a knothole, lest ye be vexed," my mother used to tell my brother and me; the moral of this story is "Listen not at one, lest ye be changed."

 

 

[from "Duma Key"]

[from "The Pop of King (75) – Stephen King's Best of '07: Movies and TV", Entertainment Weekly]

 

 

*****

 

46 INT. THE CRUISER, WITH JOE BOB

 

He's staring, surprised, into the westbound lanes. They're Army trucks, and they're headed for Arnette -- dozens of them, maybe hundreds: big brown hulks with their lights on in the daytime.

 

JOE BOB

God-dang!

 

He COUGHS NERVOUSLY and grabs his mike. During the following, the trucks continue to stream by on his left, looking like something left over from Maximum Overdrive.

 

[from "The Stand" - Teleplay]

 

 

*****

 

 

HOOK is leaning in the doorway with a can of Nozz-A-La Cola in his hand (this is a standard brand in the show, so someone needs to work out a logo).

 

[from "Kingdom Hospital" – Teleplay]

 

 

*****

 

210 EXT. LOOKING DOWN THE HIGHWAY

 

In the f.g. are NICK'S and TOM'S abandoned bikes. As the truck pulls away, GINA starts singing "Children of the Lord" (known to the heathen among you as "The Arky-Arky Song," words available from the screenwriter for a reasonable fee).

 

[from "The Stand" – Teleplay]

 

 

*****

 

 

I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with another woman last night.

And oh dear God, I think so too.

 

[from "Strawberry Spring"]

 

 

*****

 

 

THE CAMERA MOVES IN ON ROOM 719. The card on the door reads MONA KLINGERMAN. In the space provided for ATTENDING PHYSICIAN, STEGMAN has been CROSSED OUT and the name CLOONEY has been added (a small ER joke).

 

[from "Kingdom Hospital" – Teleplay]

 

 

*****

 

 

STU  [Gary Sinise]

You still from Missouri?

 

[from "The Stand" – Teleplay]

 

 

*****

 

Wanna hear my definition of a Golden Age as applies to x?

No?

Okay, here it is anyway: A Golden Age is a time when so many things about x are wonderful and unique that x itself is taken for granted.

And you can quote me, honeychile.

 

[I just did: from "On the Far Side", introduction to Gary Larson's "The Far Side Gallery 2"]

 

 

*****

 

 

I spent that day knocking out a story called "Graveyard Shift." I remember being very happy and very absorbed — having the time of my life, in fact. The story was gruesome, fast, and fun. (It later became a film which was gruesome and fast, but unfortunately not much fun.)

 

[from the new introduction to the 1999 reprint of "Carrie"]

 

 

*****

 

 

 

For one moment, the upper hallway of the house on Dark Score Lake seemed to be gone. What replaced it was a tangle of blackberry bushes, shadowless under the eclipse-darkened sky, and a clear smell of sea-salt. Jessie saw a skinny woman in a housedress with her dark hair put up in a bun. She was kneeling by a splintered square of boards. There was a puddle of white fabric beside her. Jessie was quite sure it was the skinny woman's slip. Who are you? Jessie asked the woman, but she was already gone... if she had ever been there in the first place, that was.

 

And then, all at once, it was like she looked around at me, Andy... I think she saw me. And when she did, I understood why she was so unhappy: her father'd been at her somehow, and she was tryin to cover it up. On top of that, she'd all at once realized someone was lookin at her, that a woman God knows how many miles away but still in the path of the eclipse -- a woman who'd just killed her husband -- was lookin at her.

She spoke to me, although I didn't hear her voice with my ears; it came from deep in the middle of my head. "Who are you?" she ast.

 

 

[from "Gerald's Game"]

[from "Dolores Claiborne"]

 

 

*****

 

 

I hope Andy is down there.

I hope I can make it across the border.

I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.

I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

I hope.

 

[from "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption"]

 

 

*****

 

 

STARKEY  [Ed Harris]

Is that Hungarian goulash?

 

[from "The Stand" – Teleplay]

 

 

*****

 

All quotes © by Stephen King