Stephen King has been quite vocal about his fictional super flu, Captain Tripps, not being compared to coronavirus COVID-19. On March 8, the author tweeted: “No, coronavirus is NOT like The Stand. It’s not anywhere near as serious. It’s eminently survivable. Keep calm and take all reasonable precautions.”
COVID-19 might not be exactly like Stephen King’s virus in The Stand, but the novel does provide some words of wisdom we can all use right about now.
Here are a few of my personal favorite lines that I compiled from King’s epic novel, originally published in 1978. Stay safe out there, friends… and read a good book!
1. “If we don’t have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.”
2. “Love didn’t grow very well in a place where there was only fear, just as plants didn’t grow very well in a place where it was always dark.”
3. “Love is what moves the world, I’ve always thought. It is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down … bring them low … and make them crawl.”
4. “No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or, you don’t.”
5. “The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance…logic can be happily tossed out the window.”
And perhaps my all-time favorite…
6. “The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet.”
Very nice. An object once put into motion will so remain. We say to our best selves to ‘keep writing’ because it is always true, the future is yet to be written. Joe Strummer tells no lies.
Stephen King is an awe inspiring savage that got me through Med school with a sense of humanity and humor. Thank goodness he is still with us.
Also Re: Covid, people need to chill.