“Never before in his life had he understood how subjective, how plastic, time really is.”

“Looking back on it, Sloat wasn't sure how he had tolerated Phil Sawyer for as long as he had. His partner had never played to win, not seriously; he had been encumbered by sentimental notions of loyalty and honor, corrupted by the stuff you told kids to get them halfway civilized before you finally tore the blindfold off their eyes.”

“He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride--if responsibility robs him of his manhood.”

“Eventual, as Pug used to say. When he wanted to say something was really good, he's never say it was awesome, like most people do; he'd say it was eventual. How funny is that? The old Pugmeister. I wonder how he's doing.”

“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.”

“A child blind from birth doesn't even know he's blind until someone tells him. Even then he has only the most academic idea of what blindness is; only the formerly sighted have a real grip on the thing. Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but. If the condition had been new, or more localized, he might have understood, but loneliness both encompassed his life and overreached it.”

“How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehension held before him like a shield? How could anyone?”