“He tilted back in the decaying lawn chair, almost went over on his back, and used up some more of his screwdriver. The screwdriver was in a glass he had gotten free from a McDonald's restaurant. There was some sort of purple animal on the glass. Something called a Grimace. Gary ate a lot of his meals at the Castle Rock McDonald's, where you could still get a cheap hamburger. Hamburgers were good. But as for the Grimace... and Mayor McCheese... and Monsieur Ronald Fucking McDonald... Gary Pervier didn't give a shit for any of them.”

“All of this was well meaning bullshit. But bullshit is still bullshit and will never be mistaken for McDonald's secret sauce.”

“Hair by Toni & Guy. Personality by Ronald McDonald”

“He looked back at them, and Eddie saw something he had never expected to see in his life—not even if that life stretched over a thousand years. Roland of Gilead was weeping.”

“One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander's last meal.”

“It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his MAN and his WOMAN, and most of all his BOY, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.”

“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.”