Carrie (1974) is the first published novel by Stephen King about a shy high-school girl who uses newly discovered telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who have tormented her.

Quotes

• She wished forlornly and constantly that Ewan High had individual, - and thus private - showers like the ones at Andover or Boxford. They stared. They always stared.

• Yet although she had swum and she had laughed when they ducked her (until she couldn't get her head up any more and they kept doing it and she got panicky and began to scream) and had tried to take part in the camp's activities, a thousand practical jokes had been played on ol' prayin' Carrie and she had come home on the bus a week early, her eyes red and socketed from weeping, to be picked up by Momma at the station, and Momma had told her grimly that she should treasure the memory of her scourging as proof that Momma knew, that Momma was right, that the only hope of safety and salvation was inside the red circle. 'For straight is the gate,' Momma said grimly in the taxi and at home she had sent Carrie to the closet for six hours

• The word that [Sue] was avoiding was expressed To Conform in the infinitive, and it conjured up miserable images of hair in rollers, long afternoons in front of the ironing board in front of the soap operas, while hubby was off busting heavies in an anonymous Office;..."

• Jesus watches from the wall, but his face is cold as stone. And if he loves me - as she tells me - why do I feel so all alone?
  • Carrie's poem in English class.

• Your pimples are the Lord's way of chastising you.

• "Red," Momma murmured. "I might have known it would be red".
  • Commenting on Carrie's dress.

• Boys. Yes, boys come next. After the blood the boys come. Like sniffing dogs, grinning and slobbering, trying to find out where that smell is. That...smell!

• But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutterball when you're bowling with the girls in the leage. True sorrow is as rare as true love.

• Carrie's mother: "I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will. They'll be looking at your body. The Books says-" Carrie: "Those are my breasts, Momma. Every woman has them."

• God had turned His face away and why not? This horror was as much His doing as hers.

• Late at night I keep thinking: if I had only reached to that girl, if only, if only.
  • Miss Desjardin in her note to the principal.

• People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.

About

• I couldn’t see wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn’t like and wouldn’t be able to sell. So I threw it away … After all, who wanted to read a book about a poor girl with menstrual problems.
• Very rarely in my career have I explored more distasteful territory.
  • Stephen King, "How Stephen King's Wife Saved Carrie and Launched His Carrier" Lucas Reilly, January 11, 2017.

• What fascinated us about Carrie was that her religious mother could believe that Christ performed miracles, yet when her daughter demonstrates miraculous abilities, she deems that satanic.
  • {{w:Damon Lindelof|Damon Lindelof]], "Stephen King meets creators of Lost" Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly, November 24, 2006.

External links

Encyclopedic article on Carrie (novel) at Wikipedia