"Fame is a pain in the ass!" Stephen King in the "What I've Learned" interview about his life's wisdom

Published 50 years agoCarrie, a slim book about a bullied teenager and her brutal revenge on her classmates. 76 books laterStephen Kingprobably the most famous writer in America. With novels likeEs,Cemetery of stuffed animalsandThe Shiningthe author became the undisputed master of horror. With more than 350 million copies sold and many books adapted into films (some multiple times), King's dark fantasy is a dominant force in American culture. At 76, he still writes tirelessly from his home in Bangor, Maine. His latest book is calledYou Like It Darker.

→ Fame is a “pain in the ass”! The older you get, the more annoying it becomes.

→ There is an old Spanish saying: God says: “Take what you want and pay for it.” That's exactly what happens when you become famous.

→ Writing is my job. You just can't take yourself too damn seriously. Because that's the surest way to become a blasé talker.

→ Many stories simply hit a brick wall. They are in my right desk drawer. I never look in there.

→ When I have a good idea, I know it immediately. It's like setting up dozens of cut glass goblets and hitting them with a spoon. Clink, clink, clink, and then someone goes diiiiing.

→ After the shine has faded, the serious part of every marriage begins: the relationship work.

→ You can't let the sun go down on your anger. So don't take him to bed with you. Sounds like a shitty platitude. But platitudes become platitudes for a reason.

→ Be there for your children. Say yes. Say yes as often as you possibly can.

→ Do it for fun, then you can do it forever.

→ Failure should be a learning experience.

→ What advice would I give to my 20-year-old self? Stay away from drugs and alcohol. Because you have a stupid tendency to go way too far.

→ They say that you don't go to a brothel to listen to the piano player. Sooner or later you will get a haircut in the hairdressing salon. One must stay away from temptations.

→ I have to work every day to keep the pear fresh. When I've had a few days off, everything is blurry and sticky. Like an old campaign poster in the rain.

→ You can ignore good reviews. You can become obsessed with the bad ones.

→ I would like to be remembered as someone who died happily, did his job as well as he could and was decent to people.

→ But actually people will say: “It was that horror guy!”

→ Ten percent of my tweets are political because every now and then I just get upset about something. This won't change anyone's opinion, but it's good to be able to share. In the meetings I go to, we say, “You have to claim your place.” Sometimes I feel like, yes, I have to claim my place.

→ There is a saying that says that those who are not leftists as young people have no heart, and those who are still leftists in their twenties and thirties have no brains. In fact, I think that if you're a leftist as a teenager, you probably don't have a brain. And if you're not a leftist in your thirties and forties, you don't have a heart.

→ I was hit once and seriously injured. If you ask me what I learned from my accident, I would say: stay on the sidewalk! I was driving on a country road and the guy came over the hill and caught me cold.

→ You learn something about pain. But it's no use because you forget. The body has the ability to process the trauma. I suffered a lot, but writing helped me because it distracted me. That was probably healthy. You don't want to spend your life cowering.

→ I can cook fish in a thousand different ways, but I'm also a damn good breakfast cook. My cheese omelette is a poem.