Stephen Edwin King:
(Portland, Maine, 21 September 1947).
Pseudonyms:
Richard Bachman / John Swithen / Beryl Evans.
Nickname: King of Horror.
American author of horror and science fiction stories and thrillers, among others. His books appear on lists of best-selling books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.
High school isn’t a very important place. When you’re going you think it’s a big deal, but when it’s over nobody really thinks it was great unless they’re beered up.
And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must…they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that.
But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays a while like an old friend that you have missed.
King ‘personifies the seasons’:
– Fall “kicks summer out:
autumn arrives suddenly and forcefully, replacing summer.
– Summer’s “treacherous ass”:
summer is unreliable or deceptive—it seems as though it will continue, then abruptly disappears.
– Fall “stays…like an old friend”:
once autumn arrives, it feels familiar, comforting, and welcome, as if a missed friend has returned for a long visit.
The sentence captures the sudden transition from summer to autumn in New England, combining rough humor (“kicking…ass”) with warmth and nostalgia.
> Some editions print “awhile” rather than “a while,” but the wording is otherwise commonly quoted accurately.
📚 Author and origin:
The sentence is by Stephen King, from his novel “Salem’s Lot”, first published in 1975. It appears in the narrator’s description of autumn in small-town Maine rather than as dialogue spoken by a character.
The sun was still all August, although calendar August was almost two weeks gone.
– The ‘date was already in September’ — nearly two weeks after August ended.
– But the ‘sun, heat, brightness, and summer feeling’ still seemed like August.
– “Calendar August” means the official month of August.
– “All August” means the sun felt completely August-like: hot, strong, summery, lingering.
In simpler words:
> ‘Although it was mid-September, the weather still felt like deep summer.’
Origin & Author 📚: Stephen King.
It comes from his novella “The Body”, first published in the 1982 collection “Different Seasons”.
Context 🎬:
“The Body” is the Stephen King novella that inspired the film “Stand by Me”. The story is set near the end of summer, and the line captures that nostalgic feeling of childhood summer lingering even after the calendar says it should be over.
Is it a common saying? 💬
Not really. It is ‘not an old proverb or traditional saying’; it is a literary sentence written by Stephen King. However, people may quote it because it beautifully expresses the feeling of ‘summer lasting into September’.
It was outdoor detail, and May is one fine month to be working outdoors.
