Stephen King

“The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to the movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.”

“American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar (a British advertising man with a proper education can make magazine copy for ribbed condoms sound like the Magna goddam Carta), but it has its own scruffy charm”

“The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.”

“They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead.”

“No, you're not getting exhausted yet, Garraty." [Stebbins] jerked a thumb at Olson's silhouette. "That's exhausted. He's almost through now."Garraty watched Olson, fascinated, almost expecting him to drop at Stebbins's word. "What are you driving at?""Ask your cracker friend, Art Baker. A mule doesn't like to plow. But he likes carrots. So you hang a carrot in front of his eyes. A mule without a carrot gets exhausted. A mule with a carrot spends a long time being tired. You get it?""No."Stebbins smiled again. "You will. Watch Olson. He lost his appetite for the carrot. He doesn't quite know it yet, but he has. Watch Olson, Garraty. You can learn from Olson."Garraty looked at Stebbins closely, not sure how seriously to take him. Stebbins laughed aloud. His laugh was rich and full-a startling sound that made other Walkers turn their heads. "Go on. Go talk to him, Garraty. And if he won't talk, just get up close and have a good look. It's never too late to learn.”

“McVries seemed not to have heard. "These things, they don't even bear the weight of conversation," he said, "J.D. Salinger...John Knowles...even James Kirkwood and that guy Don Bredes...they've destroyed being an adolescent, Garraty. If you're a sixteen-year-boy, you can't discuss the pains of adolescent love with any decency anymore. You just come off sounding like fucking Ron Howard with a hardon."McVries laughed a little hysterically.”

“But somebody said there was billions bet on this. You'd think they'd be lined up three deep the whole way. And that there'd be TV coverage""It's discouraged.""Why?""Why ask me?""Because you know," Garraty said, exasperated."How do you know?""Jesus, you remind me of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, sometimes," Garraty said. "Don't you ever just talk?”

“You've got no right to hate the Major. He didn't force you.""Force me? FORCE me? He's KILLING me, that's all!""It's still not-""Shut up," Baker said curtly, and Garraty shut. He rubbed the back of his neck briefly and stared up into the whitish-blue sky. His shadow was deformed huddle almost beneath his feet. He turned up his third canteen of the day and drained it.Baker said, "I'm sorry. I surely didn't mean to shout. My feet-""Sure," Garraty said."We're all getting this way," Baker said. "I sometimes think that's the worst part.”

“Their lives had another forty seconds to run.”

“He killed them with their love”

“I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.”

“On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That it was my job? My job?”

“I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.”

“Good days and long nights to ya, sai.”

“When he remembered to turn and look for it, the Talisman was gone.”

“It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”

“Rachel would call the vet this morning, they would get Church fixed, and that would put this whole nonsense of Pet Semataries(it was funny how that misspelling got into your head and began to seem right) and death fears behind them.”

“No one pronounced Jerusalems Lot deadon the morning of October 6;no one knew it was.Like the bodies of previous daysit retained every semblace of life”

“cheery as a cherrio”

“How to Draw a Picture (XII)Know when you're finished, and when you are, put your pencil or your paintbrush down. All the rest is only life.”

“There seems to be no air in the air she breaths.”

“dirty birdy”

“How life did imitate art sometimes. And the cruder the art, the closer the imitation.”

“Existe una musa, pero no esperes que baje revoloteando y esparza polvos mágicos creativos sobre tu máquina de escribir u ordenador. Siéntate a escribir y a leer muchísimo porque esa es la clave del éxito.”

“This is how we go on: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root-canal at a time; boat-builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind us as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightening flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.”

“I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”

“For men, I think, love is a thing formed of equal parts lust and astonishment. The astonishment part women understand. The lust part they only think they understand.”

“This inhuman place makes human monsters.”

“Get on before I blow you lose of your shoes and give your fathers cause to celebrate!”

“I don't want your apology, least of all for being afraid," he said. "Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit drying on our hocks." "What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else- everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?" Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chamber's salvation locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's, and the sun shone on the green expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer afternoon. After awhile, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes. Roland nodded. "I have forgotten the face. . ." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the Gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them had moved on now- Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. "I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger. . . and I cry your pardon." Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High Speech. "Your father sees you very well. . . loves you very well . . . and so do I." Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still drying on his face. "Let's go," he said, and they began to move down the long hill toward the plain which streched beyond.”

“Any parting could be forever, and we don't know.”

“So exquisitely slopped that he didn't know if he was on land or at sea.”

“so here he sits one drunk nigger in a puclic libary after closing, with the book open in front of me and the bottle of Old Kentucky on my left. 'Tell the truth and shame the devil,' my mom used to say , but she forgot to tell me that sometimes you can't shame Mr Splitfoot sober. The Irish know, but of course they're God's white niggers and who knows maybe they're a step ahead.”

“He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute.”

“Free at last, he thought. Great God Almighty, I'm free at last. Then: I believe this is redemption. And it's good, isn't it? Quite good, indeed.”

“It's funny how close the past is, sometimes. Sometimes it seems as if you could almost reach out and touch it. Only who really wants to?”

“Law enforcement: a case of good men doing bad chores.”

“I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that; it's like a license to steal.”

“The dream didn't fade as dreams usually do upon waking.”

“People with a high tolerance for boredom can get a lot of thinking done.”

“and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.”

“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.”

“SSDD Same Shit Different Day”

“You cant be too careful on a skateboard.”

“What would his father do then? Go on, Johnny supposed. People had a way of doing that, just going on, pushing through with no particular drama, no big drumrolls.”

“He grasped the knob. It was engraved with a wild rosewound around a revolver, one of those great old guns from hisfather and now lost forever.Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Towerand the voice of the roses—these voices were now one.What do you mean ?To this there was no answer, but the knob turned beneathhis hand, and perhaps that was an answer. Roland opened thedoor at the top of the Dark Tower.He saw and understood at once, the knowledge fallingupon him in a hammerblow, hot as the sun of the desert thatwas the apotheosis of all deserts. How many times had heclimbed these stairs only to find himself peeled back, curvedback, turned back? Not to the beginning (when things mighthave been changed and time's curse lifted), but to that momentin the Mohaine Desert when he had finally understood that histhoughtless, questionless quest would ultimately succeed? Howmany times had he traveled a loop like the one in the clipthat had once pinched off his navel, his own tet-ka can Gan?How many times would he travel it?"Oh, no!" he screamed. "Please, not again! Have pity! Havemercy!"The hands pulled him forward regardless. The hands of theTower knew no mercy.They were the hands of Gan, the hands of ka, and theyknew no mercy.”

“She didn't see him at first. She was watching the dancers. Her color was high, and there were deep dimples at the corners of her mouth. She looked nine miles out of place, but he had never loved her more. This was Willa on the edge of a smile.”

“I thought of telling him I didn't know about reasons, only about chains—how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you're lucky. Fucking strangled, if you're not.”

“It was as hysterical as a woman having a hot flash.”

“there's no harm in hoping for the best as long as you're prepared for the worst.”