“Was it pretty? Your country. . .your land?" "It was beautiful," the gunslinger said. "There were fields and forests and rivers and mists in the morning. But that's only pretty. My mother used to say that the only real beauty is order and love and light.”

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one's papers and identification pretty much in order.”

“If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I'll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it's yours.”

“A time will come when it won’t pass.’The gunslinger made no reply, for he knew this was true. The trap had a ghastly perfection. If someone told you you’d go to hell if you thought about seeing your mother naked (once when the gunslinger was very young he had been told this very thing), you’d eventually do it. And why? Because you did not want to imagine your mother naked. Because you did not want to go to hell. Because, if given a knife and a hand in which to hold it, the mind would eventually eat itself. Not because it wanted to; because it did not want to.”

“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet.”

“They were drugged, stone in love. To them every scar on the face of the world was a beauty mark.”

“if you tell yourself the great lie of bad art-that you are in charge-your chance at the truth will be lost. The truth isn't always pretty.”