All Quotes

"Eddie had known who they were since River Crossing, when the old people had knelt in the street to Roland. Hell, he'd known since the woods (what he still thought of as Shardik's woods), where Roland had taught them to aim with the eye, shoot with the mind, kill with the heart. Not three, not four. One. That Roland should finish them so, complete them so, was horrible. He was filled with poison and had kissed them with his poisoned lips. He had made them gunslingers, and had Eddie really thought there was no work left for the line of Arthur Eld in the mostly empty and husked-out world? That they would simply be allowed to toddle along the Path of the Beam until they got to Roland's Dark Tower and fixed whatever was wrong there? Well, guess again."

"We deal in lead."

"Three is a number of power."

"I have an object of great power."

"We're bound to do as you ask, if we judge your Calla in the White and those you call Wolves as agents of the outer dark: Beam-breakers, if you ken."

"A tear spilled down Callahan's right cheek, then another. He wiped them away absently. "I've never dared handle it, but I've seen it. Felt its power. Christ the Man Jesus help me, I have Black Thirteen under the floorboards of my church. And it's come alive. Do you understand me?" He looked at them with his wet eyes. "It's come alive.""

"There was a part of her—a spiteful Detta Walker part—that would always resent Roland's ascendancy in her heart and mind, but for the most part she recognized him for what he was: the last of his kind. Maybe even a hero."

"It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright."

"Thunderclap," she said in a voice Eddie could barely hear. "None go there.""Why?""It's dark there," she said, still not looking up from her lap. Then she raised an arm. This time she pointed in the direction from which Roland and his friends had come. Back toward Mid-World. "There," she said, "the world is ending. Or so we're told. And there..." She pointed east and now raised her face to Eddie's. "There, in Thunderclap, it's already ended. In the middle are we, who only want go our own way in peace."

"Thankee-sai, long days, kiss my ass and go to heaven."

"When it came to pulling coals out of a hot fire, he'd put two dollars on Roland of Gilead for every one he put on God and the Man Jesus, those heavenly gunslingers."

"It's the Way of the Eld. We are of that an-tet, khef and ka, watch and warrant. Gunslingers, do ya."

"When the shooting starts, we kill what moves."

"Roland was as much a prisoner of his rules and traditions as Eddie had ever been of heroin."

"The gunslinger's initial feelings for Eddie had wavered between caution and contempt for what Roland saw as his weakness of character. Respect had come more slowly. It had begun in Balazar's office, when Eddie had fought naked. Very few men Roland had known could have done that. It had grown with his realization of how much Eddie was like Cuthbert. Then, on the mono, Eddie had acted with a kind of desperate creativity that Roland could admire but never equal. Eddie Dean was possessed of Cuthbert Allgood's always puzzling and sometimes annoying sense of ridiculous; he was also possessed Alain John's deep flashes of intuition. Yet in the end, Eddie was like neither of Roland's old friends. He was sometimes weak and self-centered, but possessed of deep reservoirs of courage and courage's good sister, what Eddie himself sometimes called 'heart'."

"First come smiles, then comes lies. Last is gunfire."

"When everything's a surprise, experience takes on a dreamlike quality."

"Definition of a wanderer: a guy who's always looking beyond."

"All of your lies will cross your eyes."

"5 minutes of worth of blood and stupidity"

"They burst up and out of the earth like dragons teeth"

"We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back."

"Food and palaver don't mix."

"Anger is the most useless emotion; destructive to the mind and hurtful of the heart."

"I need no sigul. Not the potter but the potter's clay, and I need no sigul!"

"Dad-a-chum, dad-a-chee! Not to worry, you've got the key!"

"Dead, like diamonds, was forever."

"[It] was about the end of the world in the year 2000 ... It told how mad scientists made a terrific bomb that wiped out the whole world. There was a big sex orgy when everybody knew that the world was going to end, and then Jesus Christ Himself appeared ten seconds before the bomb went off."

"There are lots of good anecdotes about the bomb and Father ... For instance, do you know the story about Father on the day they first tested a bomb out at Alamagordo? After the things went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?'"

"There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look."

"We talked about the Pope and birth control, about Hitler and the Jews. We talked about phonies. We talked about truth. We talked about gangsters; we talked about business. We talked about the nice poor people who went to the electric chair; and we talked about the rich bastards who didn’t. We talked about religious people who had perversions. We talked about a lot of things."

"[Dr. Asa Breed] said, the trouble with the world was... that people were still superstitious instead of scientific. He said that if everybody would study science more, there wouldn’t be all the trouble there was."

"What is the secret of life?” I asked. “I forget,” said Sandra. “Protein,” the bartender declared. "They found out something about protein." "Yeah," said Sandra, "that's it."

"Ah, God," says Bokonon, "what an ugly city every city is."

"My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur."

"She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind. The fat woman’s expression implied that she would go crazy on the spot if anybody did any more thinking."

"Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan."

"I smiled at one of the guards. He did not smile back. There was nothing funny about national security, nothing at all."

"Naomi Faust (secretary): “I’m indestructible. And even if I did fall, Christmas angels would catch me.” Dr Asa Breed (science administrator): “They’ve been known to miss.”"

"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."

"Round and round and round we spin, With feet of lead and wings of tin..."

"I don't think he was knowable. I mean, when most people talk about knowing somebody a lot or a little, they're talking about secrets they've been told or haven't been told. They're talking about intimate things, family things, love things ... Dr. Hoenikker had all those things in his life, the way every living person has to, but they weren't the main things with him. ... Dr. Breed keeps telling me the main thing with Dr. Hoenikker was truth. ... I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person."

"There was one [conversation with Dr. Hoenikker] where he bet I couldn't tell him anything that was absolutely true. So I said to him, 'God is love' ... He said, 'What is God? What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, Baby don’t hurt me, no more.’"

"[Lyman Enders] Knowles was insane, I’m almost sure – offensively so, in that he grabbed his own behind and cried, ‘Yes, yes!’ whenever he felt that he'd made a point."

"As Bokonon says: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.""

"It’s a small world," I observed. "When you put it in a cemetery, it is."

"Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is."

"“Pretty? ... Mister, when I see my first lady angel, if God ever sees fit to show me one, it’ll be her wings not her face that’ll make my mouth fall open. I’ve already seen the prettiest face that ever could be.”"

"“Sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.”"

"“She said his mind was turned to the biggest music there was, the music of the stars.”"