Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Because things like this you can only ssay once. And you either get it wrong or right, it's the end either way, because it's too hard to ever try to say again.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the finality of certain moments and the challenges of expressing significant thoughts or feelings.
Stephen King's quote reflects on the weight of words and the impact they can have. It suggests that some statements are so crucial that they can only be made once, emphasizing the importance of getting them right. The recognition of this pressure can lead to a hesitation to speak, knowing that missteps in such moments cannot easily be corrected. Ultimately, it speaks to the complexity of human communication and emotions, acknowledging that some truths are too profound to be repeated.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech to emphasize the significance of choosing the right words.
More from Stephen King
All quotes →Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
Similar quotes
A life without problems or limitations or challenges--life without "opposition in all things," as Lehi phrased it (2 Nephi 2:11)--would paradoxically but in very fact be less rewarding and less ennobling than one which confronts--even frequently confronts--difficulty and disappointment and sorrow.
I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame; I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame; But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves, Where the rainbows play in the flying spray, 'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves.
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
What a glorious night. Every face I see is a memory. It may not be a perfectly perfect memory. Sometimes we had our ups and downs. But we're all together and you're mine for a night. And I'm going to break precedent and tell you my one-candle wish...that you would have a life as lucky as mine, where you can wake up one morning and say, 'I don't want anything more'. Sixty-five years. Don't they go by in a blink?
It is not the life that matters, but the journey.
My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.