"I would not, for we understand each other, and I shall have her until one of us dies. That might be arranged. Then plan it well, Byzantine, for death is a visitor who can call upon any man."

"Are we not all slaves, occasionally? To custom? To a situation? To an idea? Who among us it truly free, Byzantine?"

"Perhaps the blood here is thinning now, and perfume appreciated more than sweat."

"Had I asked in any of those cities, would anyone have believed they someday would lie in ruins? Each age is an age that is passing, and cities, my friend, are transitory things. Each is born from the dust; each matures, grows older, then it fades and dies. A passing traveler looks at a mound of sand and broken stones and asks 'What was here?' and his answer is only an echo or a wind drifting sand."

"What road has not left its dust upon my feet?"

"My mind is my sword, and if you linger you shall feel its edge."

"I drink the wine and put aside the glass, but the taste lingers, Lolyngton, the taste lingers!""

"He is a wise man who can choose the moment. It is not necessary to die to prove you are brave."

"How easily, at such a time, are promises made! And how vain the promises when destiny hangs in the balance!"

"Even if we win, it will be an end of this, and it is a pity that every beginning should also be an end. I shall miss the walking drum, Suzanne, miss it indeed. That drum has been our pulse, and often have I wondered what it is that starts the drum of a man's life to beating? For each of us walks to the beat of our own drum, an unheard rhythm to all our movements and thought."

"Suzanne, a wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat."

"Where there is gold, there is blood."

"Stand aside, I said! Or I shall spill your innards and walk over them to the room.-Count Robert If you come up these stairs, we shall see whose innards lie upon them. Come if you wish. You can bite on this steel.-Mathurin I do not fight with commoners. These do it for me. -Count Robert An excuse for cowardice.-Mathurin Kill him. - Count Robert If they advance one step, I shall hang the lot of them, and you higher than the rest. I am the Hansgraf Rupert von Gilderstern, of the White Company of traders. This man [Mathurin] is a merchant of our company. -Rupert von Gilderstern I have thirty men! -Count Robert I have five times that number. They are veterans of more than three hundred battles, Count Robert. Any five of my men would take your thirty and spit them like frogs. If you have had no experience of war with a merchant caravan, Count Robert, this will be a lesson to you, a lesson you would not live to appreciate. -Rupert von Gilderstern"

"Adding, for my own information, that I did not intend to die. Too much remained to be done."

"Barons, my Comtesse, bleed as easily as merchants or peasants. This one bled like the thief he was."

"The soul of business is to inspire people to buy that which they neither need nor want."

"Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again."

"There are many ways of fighting. Many a man or woman has waged a good war for truth, honor, and freedom, who did not shed his blood in the process. Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is the violence they want and neither truth nor freedom. The important thing is to know where you stand and what you believe, then be true to yourself in all things. Moreover, it is foolish to waste time in arguing questions with those who have no power to change."

"Think a little, Julot. All our lives we compromise, and without it there would be no progress, nor could men live together. You may think a man a fool, but if he is an agreeable fool you say nothing. Is that no compromise?""

"Be a philosopher. A man can compromise to gain a point. It has become apparent that a man can, within limits, follow his inclination within the arms of the Church if he does so discreetly. Remember this, Julot, even a rebel grows old, and sometimes wiser. He finds the things he rebelled against are now the things he must defend against newer rebels. Aging bones creak in the cold. Seek warmth, my friend; be discreet, but follow your own mind. When you have obtained position you will have influence. Otherwise you will tear at the bars until your strength is gone, and you will have accomplished nothing but to rant and rave."

"The companion of vagabonds. Few men are so poor they cannot have fire."

"The radical ideas of today are often the conservative policies of tomorrow, and dogma is left protesting by the wayside."

"To die for what one believes is all very well for those so inclined, but it has always seemed to me the most vain of solutions. There is not a cause worthy dying for that is not better served by living."

"That man is a fool who would descend into a well on another man's rope."

"Blasphemy? Not unless it is blasphemy to seek the truth. No, I am no blasphemer, but something worse, I am an asker of questions."

"Aye, he would cheat his own mother, and willingly, if he could have a coin by doing it."

"We rode to war. What matter if only a small war. Is the blade less sharp? The arrow less deadly? My blade this night would avenge not only my mother but my Arab teacher and all the others Tournemine had slain."

"If the dead live only in the memories of those they leave behind, then she would never die while I lived."

"On that I had no comment, for the future is the future, and I place no trust in the reading of the stars."

"Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think."

"Have you heard about the Devil quoting scriptures for his own ends? The Devil survives. Is survival, then, the first thing? Is there not something else? Honor first, then victory, but if a man is to learn, first he must live. You would be wise to go to Co'rdoba or to Toledo. The best of things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever."

"You have saved my life. Wait. Perhaps I have only made you aware of death. We do not yet know what the night may bring. -Mathurin"

"How many are the lives we meet and pass! -Mathurin"

"The whole world was losing its shit, going nineteen."

"Do people in your world always want only one story flavor at a time? Only one taste in their mouths?"

"No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves."

"And really, what could be so special about the number nineteen? Mystery Number, indeed."

"Near them, stuck on the branch of a tree, had been a note from the being Roland had just missed killing in Palace: 'Renounce the Tower. This is your last warning.' Ridiculous, really. Roland would no more renounce the Tower than he'd kill Jake's pet billy-bumbler and then roast him on a spit for dinner. None of them would renounce Roland's Dark Tower. God help them, they were in it all the way to the end."

"Do'ee say the world will end in fire or in ice, gunslinger?" Roland considered this. "Neither",he said at last. "I think in darkness"

"I'll pay ye back. By all the gods that ever were, I'll pay ye back. When ye least expect it, there Rhea will be, and your screams will break your throats. Do you hear me? Your screams will break your throats!"

"Above them, Demon Moon grinned and winked one eye through what appeared to be a shifting scrim of blood"

"Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve."

"Wondering if she wanted as badly as he did to be out of here, to be in the dark, to be alone in the dark, where he could put his false face aside before the real one beneath could grow hot enough to set it afire"

"I have no opinion. No, none at all. Opinion is politics, and politics is an evil which has caused many a fellow to be hung while he's still young and pretty."

"Because often, silence is best."

"Oh, Christ. I left the world I knew to watch a kid try to put booties on a fucked-up weasel. Shoot me, Roland, before I breed."

"The scariest, most terrifying thing that I fear?""Yes.""My Imagination.""I thought you were going to say "Fear, itself.""Then you have a small imagination."

"There is no word, not even "No", in his screams at the end. He [Roland] howls like a gutted animal, his hands fused to the ball...Alain cannot pry his hands away from the ball, so instead he lays his hand on his cheek, touching him that way. Except there's nothing left to touch. Nothing left...and the thing that rides West with Cuthbert and Alain...will not be Roland, or even the Ghost of Roland. Like the moon at the end of its cycle, Roland is gone.""

"ROLAND! I LOVE THEE!"