Stephen King Quotes

I don't think I'd want to sit down and listen to people's stories all day long.

I used to not listen that much, but I've really learnt to listen to other people and to really listen to what they're saying. I've found, especially being on a film set, people have so many different stories; if you just listen, you can pick up so much stuff. I try to listen as much as I can.

Kids who want to become writers might want to start carrying a small notebook in their backpack. I encourage people to sit down in malls and listen, just listen, to how people talk.

The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there's 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you're a good listener, and you can imagine how someone's talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not?

I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn-that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you're a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.

To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come.

I learned to write by listening to people talk. I still feel that the best of my writing comes from having heard rather than having read.

I learned real early why God gave us two ears and one mouth, because you're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk.

If I ever teach writing again, I’d say the first lesson is to listen.

I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

If you just want to be a writer, I don't care, for pitching, for writing dialogue, you should take an improvisation class. It's super important.

No matter what you write, it's a matter of putting words in a certain order so that the reader will be interested in what you're writing.

Most people never listen.

I really believe being a good listener is important for anybody, and particularly for somebody who wants to be a leader.

Is listening important? I can't think of a single walk of life where it wouldn't be.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

Instead of talking in the hope that people will listen, try listening in the hope that people will talk.

People don't listen, they just wait for their turn to talk.

I used to say that interviewing others was perhaps the way I could stop talking and start listening. It's a kind of enforced silence.

Nature has given us two ears but only one mouth.

The art of conversation lies in listening.

It was too important a matter, this talking to people, and listening to them, to do it lightly or often.

As with all other aspects of fiction, the key to writing good dialogue is honesty.

Writing good dialogue is art as well as craft.

If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.