I think the big thing is that Stephen King is just a phenomenon, and when he came along, for the first time horror was suddenly considered a very commercial genre. It had always been around, of course, but now, the books had the word 'horror' actually printed on their spines.

Joe R. Lansdale

I read a lot of science fiction, but I also mixed it up with a lot of other genres: crime, literary fiction, as well as nonfiction. Author-wise, I'm a fan of Stephen King, Lauren Beukes, Robert McCammon, Raymond Chandler, Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and Gail Simone, among many others.

Adam Christopher

Science Wit Wise

I was definitely more of a movie/cartoon guy than comics, but I really do like graphic novels - I don't have the time to sit down and read Stephen King like I used to, so I find picking up 'Saga' every now and then and just diving back into it is a great way to stay reading.

Adam F. Goldberg

Time Great Car

I grew up on Stephen King, reading the books. I love the small town, 1950s feel to it, that nostalgia, and that old America. What happens when something weird starts happening to all these people, something other-worldly, something demonic?

Alexander Koch

Love Art Worldly

My manager got the script for 'Under the Dome,' and I read it and just fell in love with the character. I grew up on Stephen King, and I love his whole aesthetic of the classic American story with supernatural events happening, so it just made sense.

Alexander Koch

Love Age Wit

Right now I'm singing along to books on tape. I typically pop in something like Stephen King's 'The Stand,' and I love singing along to that kind of stuff.

Amy Poehler

Love Typical Thing

I've always been a big fan of Stephen King, especially in my teenage years.

Andy Muschietti

Teen Age Years

Yeah, I didn't grow up in the '50s like Stephen King so I'm more versed in the '80s and the present day than the '50s.

Andy Muschietti

Yeah Versed Verse

Pet Sematary' is one of my favorite books of Stephen King and I have a deep love relationship with it.

Andy Muschietti

Relationship Pet Love

I'm a huge fan of the book and Stephen King is one of my big heroes, literary heroes, and I am a fan, and I want to see a movie of 'It.'

Andy Muschietti

Want T Stephen King

I attribute the black tones in my films to Stephen King, Tim Burton, Joe Hill and Richard Matheson. However, most of my writing is influenced by mental health. I'm incredibly passionate about shedding light on the stigmas associated with mental illnesses.

Anna Akana

Men Health Writing

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.

Anne Rice

Wonderful Wonder Won

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 by reading those books.

Anne Rice

Respect Future Writer

I can't keep up with Stephen King's output.

Anne Rice

Wit Up T

J. K. Rowling's first 'Harry Potter' manuscript was rejected 12 times. Stephen King's 'Carrie' was rejected 30 times. 'Gone With The Wind' was rejected 38 times. I was immensely proud to have beaten them all.

Ashwin Sanghi

Time Men Car

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

Barry Eisler

Truth Humor Wit

The movie is actually from a book by Stephen King called The Body. When they were gonna put it to a motion picture, they found the story was a bit too strong for the title The Body, based on a young kid's movie. It would be too heavy.

Ben E. King

Young You Would

I'm interested in everything. I don't see why Borges can't work along with Neil Gaiman, or Stephen King can't be mixed with Balzac. It's just storytelling; it's different ways of using codes and images and words and sounds.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Work Age Words

A modern-day Dickens with a popular voice and a genius for storytelling in any genre, Stephen King has written many wonderful books.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Written Wonderful Wonder

How many writers in history have ever been as famous as Stephen King? He casts an awfully long shadow.

Christopher Golden

History Famous Writers

In my formative years, I never missed the 'Creature Double Feature' on Saturday afternoon TV, even if it meant switching back and forth between 'Gamera' and the Red Sox. I did a book report on Stephen King's 'Night Shift' in seventh grade. Unrated Italian horror movies became a weekly rite of passage once I hit seventeen.

Chuck Hogan

Teen Movies Age

I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and... look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.

Clive Cussler

I'm not a dedicated writer in the sense of Stephen King.

Clive Cussler

Stephen King in general, as well as films of the apocalypse from the '70s, had a big influence on 'Zone One.'

Colson Whitehead

I have several books I can read over and over. With fiction, it's 'The Stand' by Stephen King, which is my favorite all time. I read that at least once a year, the version which has 100,000 extra words, which is like the director's cut and unabridged. I love the story. I love the social connotation to it.

Corey Taylor

I grew up poor in crappy situations... various crappy situations. What kept me sane was reading and music. I had so many different literary tastes growing up, be it fiction like Stephen King or Piers Anthony or non-fiction like reading Hunter S. Thompson essays or reading the Beats. I was a huge fan of the Beat movement.

Corey Taylor

I went through a big Kurt Vonnegut phase. But the writers who made me decide at a very early age that this is probably something I wanted to do were Stephen King and Douglas Adams, when I was probably, like, ten years old.

D. B. Weiss

Unless you are Stephen King, a book signing is attended by maybe 40 or 50 people.

Dana Stabenow

I grew up on all sorts of horror - Hammer Horror and Vincent Price's 'Theatre Of Blood.' I loved the hidden, scary layers, but there wasn't that much around for youngsters in terms of horror books. I can remember reading Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot' and 'Cujo,' but I thought there should be more for teenaged horror fans.

Darren Shan

I love 'The Stand;' I read it when I was a kid - it was one of my favorite books when I was growing up. I love Stephen King; I think he's a remarkable writer.

David Yates

I have been reading Stephen King since CARRIE and hope to read him for many years to come.

Dean Koontz

The reason you can take the leap of faith with Stephen King, when it comes to the paranormal, or the things that happen in the world that he creates, is because the characters that he writes are accessible.

Emily Rose

When I was growing up, if there was a Young Adult section of my town's library, I missed it. I wandered right from 'The Babysitter's Club' over to Stephen King. His books were big and fat and they seemed important. I eventually worked my way through most of the shelf, but 'It' is the one that stuck with me.

Erin Morgenstern

I guess if one set of my books was selling like Stephen King's, and the other wasn't selling at all, editors would want me to do the ones that sold like Stephen King's. But they seem to be willing to let me pick what I want to do next.

Fred Saberhagen

Let's start at the very end: The postscript of Stephen King's 'On Writing' contains some of the most harrowing pages he has ever written. It's here that King describes the traffic accident that nearly killed him in June 1999.

Gary Krist

A lot of my friends are people who do horror films: Wes Craven, John Carpenter, Stephen King.

George A. Romero

For many of us, our proms were less Walt Disney's 'Cinderella' and more Stephen King's 'Carrie.' The less we spent on them, the better.

Gina Barreca

If I hadn't spent many years trying to be as compassionate as Mother Teresa, as positive a thinker as W. Clement Stone, as prolific a writer as Stephen King, and as good a speaker as many of the legends I have studied, I would not be as successful as I am today.

Jack Canfield

I think Judy Blume, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz are the three authors responsible for my being where I am today. I owe them a lot.

James Dashner

Being a best-selling author doesn't make you a millionaire. It's not like Stephen King.

James McBride

Stephen King's 'On Writing' is probably the most useful writing book I've ever read.

Jason Henderson

Honestly, it's terrible, but I don't know if I've ever really read a Stephen King novel.

Jim Rash

I don't know why records are treated different than books. I don't know why an Eminem record is different than a Stephen King movie.

Jimmy Iovine

I think the big thing is that Stephen King is just a phenomenon, and when he came along, for the first time horror was suddenly considered a very commercial genre. It had always been around, of course, but now, the books had the word 'horror' actually printed on their spines.

Joe R. Lansdale

Get your butt in a chair and write. If it comes out weak or bad or clunky or ordinary, then accept that this happens to everyone. Everyone. Get it down, get it done, and fix it in the rewrite. Just like everyone from Stephen King to J. K. Rowling to Chuck Palahniuk does.

Jonathan Maberry

I talk all the time about how much I read growing up and how much I love Stephen King and how he impacted my work from a genre perspective, but Pat Conroy wrote some of the most magnificent stories about characters who had to deal with dysfunctional families and try to find a place of honor in their own world and the pain of loss.

Julie Plec

Writers of all things speculative have played in alternate and parallel worlds for a long time - everyone from Stephen King to Philip Pullman to Tanith Lee - and it's an obsession that likely isn't going away any time soon.

Kameron Hurley

It wasn't until I was in my teens that I started admiring writers as inspirations for my own work, and my earliest influences there were Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard Adams.

Kelley Armstrong

The first piece of 'long' fiction I wrote was a novella parody of Stephen King's 'Christine.' I was in high school, and my version was about a kid with a possessed locker instead of a possessed car. It was also my first attempt at humour, which fell completely flat because no one who read it realized it was a parody!

Kelley Armstrong

When all of us are forgotten, people will still be remembering Stephen King.

Leslie Fiedler

I've only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read 'The Long Walk,' one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read 'The Dark Half,' which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp. Now I have read '11/22/63.'

Lev Grossman