The Dark Tower (series)

"TOUGH TITTY, SAID THE KITTY."

"The gunslinger let me drop, and that is the truth; I still love him, and that is the truth"

"The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied."

"Hollow grandeur in place of true passions which might once have built kingdoms and sustained them."

"The Tower. Somewhere ahead, it waited for him—the nexus of Time, the nexus of Size."

"“Let the word and the legend go before you. There are those who will carry both.” His eyes flicked over the gunslinger’s shoulder. “Fools, perchance. Let the world go before you. Let your shadow grow. Let it grow hair on its face. Let it become dark.” He smiled grotesquely. “Given time, words may even enchant an enchanter. Do you take my meaning, gunslinger?”"

"The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would someday come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle."

"Beyond the reach of human range, a drop of hell, a touch of strange"

"It was a blade of grass. But it was purple."

"The World has moved on. Bad times are on horseback."

"Perhaps they only looked for a Jesus to heal them, raise them Lazarus-like from the darkness."

"The man in black smiled. "Shall we tell the truth then, you and I? No more lies?""I thought we had been."But the man in black persisted as if Roland hadn't spoken. "Shall there be truth between us, as two men? Not as friends, but as equals? There is an offer you will get rarely, Roland. Only equals speak the truth, that's my thought on't. Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard. How tiresome!""

"Come, come, come. You progress, gunslinger! Oh, how I envy you. We make great magic together, you and I. You kill me no more than you kill yourself. Mother-may-I? Yes-you-may."

"Shaken and alone, enwrapt in the darkness, terrified of an ultimate meaning rushing at him, he gathered himself and uttered the final answer on that subject: “NEVER!”“THEN LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light, crashing in on him like a hammer, a great and primordial light."

"The universe (he said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a non-living brain—although it may think it can—the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatist and the romantic. There was a time, yet a hundred generations before the world moved on, when mankind had achieved enough technical and scientific prowess to chip a few splinters from the great stone pillar of reality. Even so, the false light of science (knowledge, if you like) shone in only a few developed countries. One company (or cabal) led the way in this regard: North Central Positronics, it called itself. Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights."

"Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things—as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everything yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up."Think how small such a concept of things make us, gunslinger! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see... what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?"

"Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a room?..."You dare not."And in the gunslinger's mind, those words echoed: You dare not."

"Had he come this far just to die, then? He would not. And if he were to die in spite of his determination, he would die on his way to the Tower."

"The door had hinges, but they were fastened to nothing—or so it seems, the gunslinger thought. This is a mystery, a most marvelous mystery, but does it really matter? You are dying. Your own mystery—the only one that really matters to any man or woman in the end—approaches."

"When the only fast way you could get rid of the monkey on your back was to snap your spinal cord above that bunch of nerves, you were dealing with one heavy monkey."

"As Henry Dean, the great sage and eminent junkie would have put it, Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life’s a fiction and the world’s a lie, so put on some Creedence and let’s get high."

"Good. Call it fluttergork if you want, pr... Eddie. Just do it"

""Jesus Christ, when these DO shoot, they really blow holes in things"."

"“Who are you?” Eddie screams at him.“Your destiny, Eddie,” the gunslinger whispers."

"There are people who need people to need them. The reason you don’t understand is because you’re not one of those people. You’d use me and then toss me away like a paper bag if that’s what it came down to. God fucked you, my friend. You’re just smart enough so it would hurt you to do that, and just hard enough so you’d go ahead and do it anyway. You wouldn’t be able to help yourself. If I was lying on the beach there and screaming for help, you’d walk over me as if I was between you and your goddamn Tower."

"You’re a Tower Junkie, Roland."

"Fault always lies in the same place, my fine babies: with him weak enough to lay blame."

"In a world that was clearly going to hell head-first, what was so low about getting high?"

""God pisses down the back of your neck every day but only drowns you once"."

"“Won’t somebody please explain where I am and how I got here?” the woman in the wheelchair asked – almost pleaded.“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Dorothy,” Eddie said. “You ain’t in Kansas anymore.”"

"If you have given up your heart for the Tower, Roland, you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. To be a beast is perhaps bearable, although the man who has become one will surely pay hell’s own price in the end, but if you should gain your object? What if you should, heartless, storm the Dark Tower and win it? What could you do except degenerate from beast to monster? To gain one’s object as a beast would only be bitterly comic, like giving a magnifying glass to an elephaunt. But to gain one’s object as a monster…To pay hell is one thing. But do you want to own it?"

"“Well,” Eddie said, “What was behind Door Number One wasn’t so hot, and what was behind Door Number Two was even worse, so now, instead of quitting like sane people, we’re going to go right ahead and check out Door Number Three. The way things have been going, I think it’s likely to be something like Godzilla or Ghidra the Three-Headed Monster, but I’m an optimist. I’m still hoping for the stainless steel cookware.”"

"If we were going to rape you, you would be one well-raped woman by now"

"“I love you, Eddie. You have tried so hard. Been so patient. So has he—” she nodded toward the place where the gunslinger lay propped against the rocks, watching. “– but he is a hard man to love.”"

"Later, with strange galaxies turning in slow gavotte overhead, neither thought the act of love had ever been so sweet, so full."

"Control the things you can control, maggot. Let everything else take a flying fuck at you, and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing."

"The thunder of his own guns filled him with stupid wonder."

"I am three women…I who was; I who had no right to be but was; I am the woman you have saved. I thank you gunslinger."

"By Profession, He was a Successful C.P.A. Pushing was only his Hobby."

"When it came to murder, Jack Mort was an equal-opportunity employer."

"Who was to say he had not sculpted the cosmos today, or might not at some future time? God, no wonder he creamed his jeans!"

"There ensued a short, violent struggle. The Gunslinger won, but it was a surprisingly hard go. In his way, Jack Mort was as divided as Odetta. He was not a schizophrenic as she was; he knew well enough what he did from time to time. But he kept his secret self—the part of him that was The Pusher—as carefully locked away as an embezzler might lock away his secret skim."

"Do-Bees covered all the bases."

"The stairs were choked with people who had reversed their downward course when the yelling and shooting started, obsessed with that morbid and somehow unique New Yorkers’ curiosity to see how bad, how many, how much blood spilled on the dirty concrete. Yet somehow they still found a way to shrink back from the man in the blue suit who came plunging down the stairs. It wasn’t much wonder. He was holding a gun, and another was strapped around his waist. Also, he appeared to be on fire."

"Jack Mort died alone."

"I do not aim with my hand; He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.I do not shoot with my hand; He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind.I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart."

"Choo-Choo, thought Jake, and shuddered."

"Blaine is a pain, and that is the truth.Yet his heart, that silent, watchful, lifelong prisoner of Ka, received the words of this promise not just with wonder but with doubt."

"See the TURTLE, ain't he keen? All things serve the fucking Beam!"

"'At this nexus lies the Great Portal that so-called Thirteenth Gate which rules not just this world but all worlds.'"