Millions of people have enjoyed the many books and works of Stephen King and learnt myriad lessons from their themes, twists, turns and events.

But of course, there is a man behind the stories and he too has dispensed advice and pearls of wisdom picked up over the course of a 40 year plus writing career.

We've selected 30 of our favourite pieces of wisdom from the author himself - including not only tips for budding writers, but life lessons too...

These are the best Stephen King adaptations.

1. "The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool"

2. "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."

3. "Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones."

4. "We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones."

5. "Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process."

6. "I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged."

7. "Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again."

8. "If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."

9. "When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'"

10. "Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us."

11. "You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you."

12. "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

13. “Books are a uniquely portable magic."

14. “Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”

15. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

16. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

17. “I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.”

18. "A short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

19. “Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”

20. “A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”

21. “Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

22. “Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

23. “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

24. “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”

25. “In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

26. "I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses."

27. “Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.”

28. “It is the tale, not he who tells it.”

29. “The only mortal sin is giving up.”

30. “I write to find out what I think.