Carrie (novel)

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

Part 1: Blood Sport

• It was reliably reported by several persons that a rain of stones fell from a clear blue sky on Carlin Street in the town of Chamberlain on August 17th.
  • p. 3

• On the surface, all the girls in the shower room were shocked, thrilled, ashamed, or simply glad that the White bitch had taken it in the mouth again. Some of them might also have claimed surprise, but of course their claim was untrue.
  • p. 4

• Carrie stood among them stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color. [...] 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.
  • p. 5

• The girls were bombarding her with tampons and sanitary napkins.
  • p. 9

• She hardly would have admitted the pleasure the act gave her, and she certainly would have denied that she regarded Carrie as a fat, whiny bag of lard.
  • p. 13

• The concept, linked irrevocably in her mind with the "sin" of intercourse, had been blocked entirely from her mind. She may simply have refused to believe that such a thing could happen to her.
  • p. 17

• She hated her face, her dull, stupid, bovine face, the vapid eyes, the red, shiny pimples, the nests of blackheads. She hated her face most of all. The reflection was suddenly split by a jagged, silvery crack. The mirror fell on the floor and shattered at her feet, leaving only the plastic ring to stare at her like a blinded eye.
  • p. 53

• Did any of you stop to think that Carrie White has feelings? Do any of you ever stop to think? Sue? Fern? Helen? Jessica? Any of you? You think she's ugly. Well, you're all ugly.
  • p. 77

• Unfortunately, Ewen is staffed completely by men in its administration wing. I don't believe they have any real conception of how utterly nasty what you did was.
  • p. 78

• 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.
  • p. 117

• 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!

Part 2: Prom Night

• She had bought a special brassiere to go with it, which gave her breasts the proper uplift (not that they actually needed it) but left their top halves uncovered.
  • p. 147

• "Red", Momma murmured. "I might have known it would be red".
  • p. 148, Commenting on Carrie's dress.

• Let them burn, then. Let the streets be filled with the smell of their sacrifice. Let this place be called racca, ichabod, wormwood.
  • p. 249

• 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 league. 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.

• 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.

Part 3: Wreckage

• A week after the tornado of '54 had cut its path of death and destruction through Worcester, the air was filled with the sound of hammers, the smell of new timber, and a feeling of optimism and human resilience. There is none of that in Chamberlain this fall. the main road has been cleared of rubble and that is about the extent of it. The faces that you meet are full of dull hopelessness.
  • p. 298

• ...am returning my contract to you at this time. I feel that I would kill myself before ever teaching again. 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.

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.
  • Damon Lindelof, "Stephen King meets creators of Lost" Jeff Jensen, Entertainment Weekly, November 24, 2006.

External links

Encyclopedic article on Carrie (novel) on Wikipedia

Stephen King's Carrie
Novel	Carrie (1974)
Films	Carrie (1976) · The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) · Carrie (2002) · Carrie (2013)
Musical	Carrie: The Musical (1988)