# 11/22/63 ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51gir4MU%2B2L._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Stephen King]] - Full Title: 11/22/63 - Category: #books ## Highlights - “I’m losing you because you know more about the Civil War in the nineteenth century than you do about the one that ripped this country apart after the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. If I asked you who starred in The Graduate, I’m sure you could tell me. But if I asked you to tell me who Lee Oswald tried to assassinate only a few months before gunning Kennedy down, you’d go ‘Huh?’ Because somehow all that stuff has gotten lost.” ([Location 869](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=869)) - In my life as a teacher, I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity. In both fiction and nonfiction, there’s only one question and one answer. What happened? the reader asks. This is what happened, the writer responds. This… and this… and this, too. Keep it simple. It’s the only sure way home. ([Location 2113](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=2113)) - life’s simplest answers are often the easiest to overlook. ([Location 4223](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=4223)) - But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances. ([Location 4341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=4341)) - Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent. ([Location 4590](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=4590)) - you’ve ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you’ll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be. ([Location 4604](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=4604)) - Sometimes a man and a woman reach a crossroads and linger there, reluctant to take either way, knowing the wrong choice will mean the end… and knowing there’s so much worth saving. ([Location 5713](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=5713)) - We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why. Not until the future eats the present, anyway. We know when it’s too late. ([Location 6331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=6331)) - Hound of heaven, I thought. Hound of heaven. ([Location 6530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=6530)) - FEAR, standing for false evidence appearing real. ([Location 7561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=7561)) - For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don’t we all secretly know this? It’s a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dreamclock chiming beneath a mystery-glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark. ([Location 8566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=8566)) - Every public speaker worth his salt knows to concentrate on specific members of the audience, and I focused on a pair in the third row who looked remarkably like Ma and Pa in American Gothic. ([Location 8580](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=8580)) - someone ([Location 11270](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005K0HDGE&location=11270))