“Guys like Henry and his buddies were an accident waiting to happen; the little kids' version of floods or tornadoes or gallstones.”

“You know how it's going to end, but instead of spoiling things, that somehow increases your fascination. It's like watching a kid run his electric train faster and faster and waiting for it to derail on one of the curves.”

“The only problem with him and Henry was they were like Charlie Brown and Lucy. The only difference was once in a while Henry would hold onto the football so Eddie could kick it--not often, but once in a while. Eddie had even thought, when in one of his heroin dazes, that he ought to write Charles Schultz a letter. Dear Mr. Schultz, he would say. You're missing a bet by ALWAYS having Lucy pull the football up at the last second. She ought to hold it down there once in a while. Nothing Charlie Brown could ever predict, you understand.Sometimes she'd maybe hold it down for him to kick three, even four times in a row, then nothing for a month, then once, and then nothing for three or four days, and then, you know, you get the idea. That would REALLY fuck the kid up, you know?”

“You didn't want to call your boyfriend Buddy, but when reverting to his real name meant Bruce, it left you with no real ground to stand on.”

“God turned out to be a bunch of bad little kids playing interstellar Xbox. Isn't that funny?”

“King looked back at Roland. "As The Man With No Name--a fantasy version of Clint Eastwood--you were okay. A lot of fun to partner up with.""Is that how you think of it?""Yes. But then you changed. Right under my hand. It got so I couldn't tell if you were the hero, the antihero, or no hero at all. When you let the kid drop, that was the capper.""You said you made me do that."Looking Roland straight in the eyes--blue meeting blue amid the endless choir of voices--King said, "I lied, brother.”

“If it were possible to go back in a time machine and change the stupid things some of us did in grammar school and junior high, Soups old buddy, that gadget would be booked up right into the twenty-third century.”