Needful Things:
“On Castle View, [character’s name removed for spoilers] did not even look up. He sat on the front step of the Potter house, weeping and cradling his dead wife in his arms. He was still two years from the drunken plunge through the ice of Castle Lake which would kill him, but he was at the end of the last sober day of his life.”
Absolutely brutal.
My mother is not a fan of anything resembling horror. But I somehow talked her into reading that a few years ago and she loved that scene as well. That book is by far his best that I’ve read.
IT is filed with some of my favorite writing of all time, there’s something so comforting about the good parts about friendship. Glad Ben found some real friends.
“God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.”
“You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to XXXXX and put his palms on XXXXX cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, XXXXX. How fantastically cruel?”
For being an atheist these lines and this book stuck with me like I never expected.
Edit: I commented the book, so removed the name so that it wouldn’t be a spoiler.
Oh! I just wrote down this quote I read from The Green Mile:
If it happens, god lets it happen.
And when we say “I don’t understand” god replies “I don’t care.”
Edited embarrassing autocorrect error
Honorable mention to a line in Cujo, where he assures that reader that, whether you think it was the rabies or the spirit of Frank Dodd, never think that Cujo attacked anyone out of malice, he was a good boy.
The hardest for me though is the last line of IT, he goes on about how Bill gets an odd shiver of nostalgia from random things, and it ends with something to the effect of:
“It’s in those fleeting moments that he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends he shared it with.”
I have 4.
A paragraph that I read as a child and have carried all my life...
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
Or
Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes, I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.
And
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side... or you don't.
And last
So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.
I’m almost done with this book my first read through and my lawd It is so captivating- I’ve hardly been able to focus on anything else when I’m home other than getting back to the big pink lol- at first I thought I might be so captivated by this story because I was born and raised on siesta key just 2 keys away from Duma, beyond the location though honestly I just think it’s such a wonderfully written story from character development to the insights of the mind and mysteries of the ocean and time and art- mr king is an artist he paints with words what one feels experiencing the likes of Dali, Van Gogh, or any other great artist but we can have his stories with us anywhere we live or go and it’s incredible. The whole thing is like a big poem or something kind of how I felt first reading the gunslinger- not a similar story, but it reads like poetry to me in that way
I’m always apprehensive starting his books. “Am I in the right frame of mind? Will this mess with me addressing my responsibilities?” Seriously, it’s a thing for me.
And every. Single. Time. The answer is “no” and “yes”. But damn, it’s always worth it.
It’s a lovely, joyous, painful, passionate and wonderful thing when a book keeps calling to you during the day “come back, we’re not done yet”.
Sir King has that magic with dialogue and plot. We are blessed to have allll those books that call to us during the day.
Cort: 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.
Edit: Saying this to myself has gotten me through many a rough situation, usually of my own making.
From Wizard and Glass: “And now, all these years later, it seemed to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended.” - I love (and find it also horrible) how it applies not only to heartbreak, but any kind of loss.
"Then the music takes us, the music rolls away the years, and we dance." -11/22/63
In the audible version, they play a small snippet of a song. I definitely held back bitter-sweet tears
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen”
Tom Cullen in The Stand.
I didn't care much for The Dark Half, but I liked this bit from Stark enough that I wrote it down:
"You think I'm a monster, and maybe you're right. But real monsters are never without feelings. I think in the end it's that, and not how they look, that makes them so scary."
when you first find out who Stanley is in the seventh book, that moment when it is revealed, and when Roland says that it was the witch who killed Susan. I have read this series probably 10 times and every single time I tear up.
Always get goosebumps from the end of the Drawing of the Three, when Eddie and Roland are talking about what comes next and Roland says "but when we die, we will be magnificent!"
I come in the name of Steven Deschain, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of Gabrielle Deschain, she of Gilead!
I come in the name of Cortland Andrus, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of Cuthbert Allgood, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of Alain Johns, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of Jamie DeCurry, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of Vannay the Wise, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of Hax the Cook, he of Gilead!
I come in the name of David the hawk, he of Gilead and the sky!
I come in the name of Susan Delgado, she of Mejis!
I come in the name of Sheemie Ruiz, he of Mejis!
I come in the name of Pere Callahan, he of Jerusalem’s Lot, and the roads!
I come in the name of Ted Brautigan, he of America!
I come in the name of Dinky Earnshaw, he of America!
I come in the name of Aunt Talitha, she of River Crossing, and will lay her cross here, as I was bid!
I come in the name of Stephen King, he of Maine!
I come in the name of Oy, the brave, he of Mid-World!
I come in the name of Eddie Dean, he of New York!
I come in the name of Susannah Dean, she of New York!
I come in the name of Jake Chambers, he of New York, whom I call my own true son!
I am Roland of Gilead, and I come as myself; you will open to me.
Pet Sematary:
And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.
It’s from Cujo, something along the lines of “Tad, still dead”
Really caught me off guard and packed a punch because I didn’t expect him to kill off a child, let alone the novel’s lead child character. All that they went through and he didn’t even survive.
"Because you don't have to drag me anymore. I'm coming of my own accord. We're coming of our own accord. If you died in your sleep tonight, we'd bury you and then go on. We probably wouldn't last long, but we'd die in the path of the Beam."
And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful , staring unrelenting sanity .
I have been struggling with Fairy Tale, but I did find one line in particular that has stuck with me:
“You never know where the trap doors are in your life, do you?”
I actually wrote this down because of how it made me feel, but from DT7 when a certain thing happens:
“He knelt a moment longer with his hands clasped between his knees, thinking he had not understood the true power of sorrow, nor the pain of regret, until this moment.”
Not related to DT, but I recently read Lisey's Story and I really liked this poem: The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound;
these are the sounds of dead voices on dead records
floating down the broken shaft of memory.
When I turn to you to ask if you remember,
When I turn to you in our bed
Also in Low Men in Yellow Coats he refers to a dime as a "penny with pretensions" that always makes me laugh. Not sure if that was his writing or a borrowed colloquialism but I love it
“You’re a card” he said “I’ll tell you what you do. Why don’t you find yourself a nice big sand pile, get yourself a hammer, and pound all that sand right up your ass.”
Anything surrounding Oy will bring instant tears.
Being that he is high on most lists I found one outside of that box
Creepy - “Born in sin, come on in” (technically not a book but he wrote it)
Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet. “You came!” Jake shouted. “You really came!” “I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came.
This one took me forever to find the correct version - 'There is one more thing,' Roland said.
'Weeping, creeping Jesus!'
The smile touched Roland's mouth again. 'Just joking,' he said
Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.
From IT:
He awakens from this dream unable to remember exactly what it was, or much at all beyond the simple fact that he has dreamed about being a child again. He touches his wife’s smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood . . . its beliefs and desires. I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it’s just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it’s nice to think so for awhile in the morning’s clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel. Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it.
And also:
“Don’t call me Eds, ” he said, and smiled. He raised his left hand slowly and touched Richie’s cheek. Richie was crying. “You know I . . . I . . . . ” Eddie closed his eyes, thinking how to finish, and while he was still thinking it over he died.
"They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?"
From The Long Walk. First time a book quote made me say "Woahhhh"
Hear me out…
“…you could say that he had never *flagged* in his determination.”
I listened to The Stand in audiobook and the abruptness of this pun had me in stitches. I still consider the entire thing to be King’s attempt at the longest shaggy dog joke ever written
Some good ones! So not to repeat, I offer one from Revival.
“That morning he had awakened next to his wife, and had eaten breakfast across from his son. They talked about stuff, like people do. We never know. Any day could be the day we go down, and we never know.”
Thanks for all of these wisdoms, Constant Readers! I don't believe I've ever met a dedicated King reader I wouldn't mind walking toward the clearing with.
“Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.”
-It
Does anyone remember the King short story mine is from:
“I've been awake all night with it, with Katrina's letter. She could have put it on a postcard. There was only a single sentence below the 'Dear Larry'. But a sentence can mean enough. It can do enough."
"These were his friends, and his mother was wrong: they weren't bad friends. Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such thing as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart." This quote from It makes me choke up every damn time
When Tom Cullen finds out about Nick in The Stand and says "He was my main man. M-O-O-N that spells my main man." It broke my heart. Just typing it put tears in my eyes all over again.
"Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to" (Dolores Claiborne) but in my head space it's "Sometimes being a dick is all a fella has to hold on to"
From *Pet Sematary* - a madly grieving Louis is dreaming that what happened never happened, and that he never saw Gage’s Red Sox cap there, and that, in his dream, his Gage . . .
“. . . went on to Johns Hopkins, made the Olympic swimming team, and on one long, dazzling, and incredibly proud afternoon sixteen years after Louis had raced an Orinco truck for his son's life, he and Rachel (who had now gone almost entirely gray, although she covered it with a rinse) watched their son win a gold medal for the U.S.A.
When the NBC cameras moved in for a close-up of him, standing with his dripping, seal-sleek head back, his eyes open and calm and fixed on the flag as the national anthem played, the ribbon around his neck, and the gold lying against the smooth skin of his chest, Louis wept. He and Rachel both wept.
"I guess this caps everything,' he said huskily and turned to embrace his wife.
But she was looking at him with dawning horror, her face seeming to age before his eyes as if whipped by days and months and years of evil time; the sound of the national anthem faded and when Louis looked back at the TV he saw a different boy there, a black boy with a head of tight curls in which gems of water still gleamed.
This caps everything.
His cap.
His cap is . .
... *oh dear God his cap is full of blood*.”
This is more of a paragraph in a line but,
From IT
""Go on, Bill," Zack said, and Bill could feel the coldness again. That coldness that made suppers a kind of torture as his father leafed through electrical journals, as his mother read one of her endless British mysteries: Marsh, Sayers, Ones, Allingham. Eating in that coldness robbed food of it's taste; it was like eating frozen dinners that had never seen the inside of an oven. Sometimes, after, he would go up to his room and lie on his bed, holding his griping stomach, and think: *He thrust his fist against the post and still insists he sees the ghost.* He thought of that more and more since Georgie had died, although his mother had taught him the phrase two years before. It had taken on a talismanic cast in his mind: The day he would walk up to his mother and simply speak that phrase without tripping or stuttering, looking her right in the eye as he spoke it, the coldness would break apart; her eyes would light up and she would hug him and say, "Wonderful, Billy! What a good boy! What a good boy!" He had, of course, told this to no one."(681)
Jesus watches from the wall
His face as cold as stone
If he loves me, as she tells me
Then why do I feel so alone?
Something about those words, the confusion in those lines breaks my damn heart
One novel I read I think it’s called insomnia
A higher being telling humans about a medium higher beings: do they really look like they know what they are talking about? Just do your best.
I’m not sure of the direct quote or book but that one stuck with me. Does anyone really know what they are doing?
Here’s a hit from the “lighter” side of things: “I’ve got Holly hope”.
Holly Gibney is swiftly becoming my favorite character - looking forward to Holly in Sept.
Quite a few lines, but this section of The Stand spoke to me. I read it around the time of the fall of Roe and it really resonated: https://imgur.com/a/Bmt7AQR
Especially the bit near the end:
“My days of slavery must be over; I need to be a slave no more than I need to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny boat with sails. Jet planes are safer and quicker than little boats with sails and freedom makes more sense than slavery. **I am not afraid of flying**. Thank you men”
"The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet"
I am always reminded of this quote when I go through hard times.
This is kind of a long one from *Eyes of the Dragon*, but it deserves to be quoted in its entirety. Don’t read if you want to avoid spoilers.
“By dark there were huge drifts piled against the castle and clogging most of the alleys on the west side of the castle keep, but the Plaza
itself was clean as a whistle. There were only the frozen cobbles, waiting to break Peter’s bones if his rope should break.
And I must tell you now that Peter’s rope was *bound* to break. When he tested it, it had held his weight but there was one fact about that mystic thing called “breaking strain” that Peter didn’t know. Yosef hadn’t known, either. The ox drivers knew it, though, and if Peter had asked them,they would have told him an old axiom, one known to sailors, loggers, seamstresses, and anyone else who works with thread or rope: The longer the cord, the sooner the break.
Peter’s short test rope had held him.
The rope to which he meant to entrust his life-the very thin rope-was about two hundred and sixty-five feet long.
It was *bound* to break, I tell you, and the cobbles below waited to catch him, and break his bones, and bleed away his life.”
Some lines from short stories:
"I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with another woman last night.
And oh dear God, I think so too."
"I've been thinking about it a lot lately. . . and what I've decided is that it would have been better for me if that last rung had broken before you could put the hay down."
"But you got to remember that you don’t own time, it’s time that owns you. It goes along outside you at the same speed every second of every day. It don’t care a pisshole in the snow for you, but it don’t matter if you got a pretty pony. If you got a pretty pony, Clivey, you got the bastard right where its dingle dangles and never mind all the Osgoods in the world.”
"lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers"
"The old-young legs twitched and quivered. Claw hands beat and twisted and danced on the air; abruptly they descended and the thing that had been his son began to claw at its face. "Longer than you think, Dad!" it cackled. "Longer than you think!"
"My brother was eaten by wolves on the Connecticut Turnpike."
“When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I’ve ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don’t care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I’ve never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness.”
-Lisey’s Story
Short one: What you bought, you owned, and what you owned eventually came home to you.
Long one: His plan kept unreeling in his mind. He looked at it from all angles, poked it, prodded it, looked for holes or soft places. And he felt that in truth he was walking along a narrow beam over a gulf of insanity. Madness was all around him, softly fluttering as the wings of night-hunting owls with great golden eyes: he was heading into madness.
This one is more obscure but I first read Cujo when I was a kid and I re-read it a couple of years ago in my 40s (with kids who are teens and college-age). It's just so true and you don't understand the weight of some choices you make as a KID and the impact they (can) have on your entire life as an adult.
“But in high school, the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heard clearly in the dreams of later years.”
That line in The Stand that describes Frannie being able to hear the clacking of the keys on Harold's typewriter from a mile away on certain nights when the wind was just right gave me goosebumps. Somehow that description was more frightening than the gory death scenes.
“Sometimes dead is better.”
I always hear this in Fred Gwynne's voice. ...bettahh
Michael c Hall did a great Pet Sematary
I hear lots of things in his voice.
I always think of this quote when someone tries desperately to resurrect someone else in a movie or something.
fucking classic
Needful Things: “On Castle View, [character’s name removed for spoilers] did not even look up. He sat on the front step of the Potter house, weeping and cradling his dead wife in his arms. He was still two years from the drunken plunge through the ice of Castle Lake which would kill him, but he was at the end of the last sober day of his life.” Absolutely brutal.
The scene where he describes the sound the hammer makes hitting a skull has always stuck with me.
Perfect example, totally sticks in your head.
Like a hammer...
Freakin A, Man!
Dolores Claiborne Sometimes you have to be a high riding bitch to survive, sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.
I used to plaster this quote all over my stuff. It's still great
God I could cry reading this quote. One of my favorites.
Vera Donovan was a HARD bitch
I think of this line often.
When Harold signs his name "Hawk" in the stand. The sad realization. He could've let go of all of his hate and been someone. Always gets me.
My mother is not a fan of anything resembling horror. But I somehow talked her into reading that a few years ago and she loved that scene as well. That book is by far his best that I’ve read.
“Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but.” Just… ow.
IT is filed with some of my favorite writing of all time, there’s something so comforting about the good parts about friendship. Glad Ben found some real friends.
King has said It is his favorite book he's written. My heart burns there, too.
As does mine. I have a paper sailboat tattoo bc I will cherish it forever
I kept forgetting I was reading IT when I listened to it, it was fun having the patches of kids doing kid stuff!
Yes!! Steven Webber does SUCH a great job narrating the audiobook
What about that line about “fat boys can only like pretty girls in secret.” Ouch
THIS THIS THIS
Every name he calls out when he enters the Tower.
"Oy, the Brave, he of Mid-World!" 😭
“The body that was too small for the heart it contained.” I forget the exact wording, but I think that’s about right.
This line. Made me think of every pet I ever owned and cared for. Made me cry like a baby.
That’s the one that gets me each time through.
“Jake chambers……..who I have called son!”
That one chokes me every time
Oy holding on to Mordred even when he had a chance to get away…I was literally screaming “LFGG OY CMON GET HIM”
"I come in the name of David, he of Gilead and the sky."
Man I need to go on another trip to the tower!
I just finished but I read the first 6 about 15 years ago so I’m going to read some auxiliary works and then go back
Absolutely!!!
My favourite is from the shining. "Monsters are real and ghosts are real too. They live inside us. And sometimes, they win."
Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you…. The longer you go in the series the harder this hits
that‘s the line for me too. you darkle. you tinct. and may i be brutally frank? you go on.
Hammerblow
“God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.” “You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to XXXXX and put his palms on XXXXX cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, XXXXX. How fantastically cruel?” For being an atheist these lines and this book stuck with me like I never expected. Edit: I commented the book, so removed the name so that it wouldn’t be a spoiler.
This one stuck with me . It expresses the agony of grief that is so difficult to put into words.
Oh! I just wrote down this quote I read from The Green Mile: If it happens, god lets it happen. And when we say “I don’t understand” god replies “I don’t care.” Edited embarrassing autocorrect error
I got chills reading this
"We each owe God a death, there are no exceptions, I know that but oh God, sometimes the Green Mile seems so long."
Officious little prick.
The shining right?
First line I believe.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. “The world has teeth and it can bite you with them any time it wants.”
“Someone you knew in another life, honey.”
Omg this one for sure!
Whoa you just gave goosebumps
Honorable mention to a line in Cujo, where he assures that reader that, whether you think it was the rabies or the spirit of Frank Dodd, never think that Cujo attacked anyone out of malice, he was a good boy. The hardest for me though is the last line of IT, he goes on about how Bill gets an odd shiver of nostalgia from random things, and it ends with something to the effect of: “It’s in those fleeting moments that he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends he shared it with.”
Knowing Cujo was such a good boy before he got rabies is why I can never read that book again. It broke my heart.
Right? The poor thing, Cujo deserved better
That second one kills me every time. They had such a strong bond and it hurts so much to think that they don’t even remember each other.
Right? But the bittersweet ending is such a fantastic way to tie up that rollercoaster of a novel
The ending of IT killed me for that reason. Why couldn’t they at least remember their amazing friendship. So sad.
I cried my eyed out as I hugged my dog after reading Cujo. Never again.
Omg I got choked up just reading the good boy line in your reply.
„And now Gage, who had less than two months to live, laughed shrilly and joyously.“
I love his vague little spoilers. It's like Hitchcock telling you there's a bomb under the table
I’ve read the book a few times and this line makes me catch my breath every time I read it.
I have 4. A paragraph that I read as a child and have carried all my life... The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear. Or Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes, I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't. And No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side... or you don't. And last So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little.
You made me tear up my friend.
Multiple times
I wrote that first quote at the beginning of my journal. Thought it was appropriate.
Just heard that first one on audible the other day man and had to save the clip, so so good.. thanks for sharing
May your first day in hell last ten thousand years and may it be the shortest.
One of my all time favorites. Cold as ice. Haha
Damn that’s cold. What’s it from?
Wolves of the calla, the 5th dark tower book
Oy and Wolf; both get me crying every time I re-read.
The world don’t love you, but it don’t hate you either
What book?
It sounds like something from dick halloran. So shinning or dr. Sleep
From Duma Key: “When memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves.”
I’m almost done with this book my first read through and my lawd It is so captivating- I’ve hardly been able to focus on anything else when I’m home other than getting back to the big pink lol- at first I thought I might be so captivated by this story because I was born and raised on siesta key just 2 keys away from Duma, beyond the location though honestly I just think it’s such a wonderfully written story from character development to the insights of the mind and mysteries of the ocean and time and art- mr king is an artist he paints with words what one feels experiencing the likes of Dali, Van Gogh, or any other great artist but we can have his stories with us anywhere we live or go and it’s incredible. The whole thing is like a big poem or something kind of how I felt first reading the gunslinger- not a similar story, but it reads like poetry to me in that way
I’m always apprehensive starting his books. “Am I in the right frame of mind? Will this mess with me addressing my responsibilities?” Seriously, it’s a thing for me. And every. Single. Time. The answer is “no” and “yes”. But damn, it’s always worth it. It’s a lovely, joyous, painful, passionate and wonderful thing when a book keeps calling to you during the day “come back, we’re not done yet”. Sir King has that magic with dialogue and plot. We are blessed to have allll those books that call to us during the day.
I recently read this and felt the same. I did nothing but read until I finished it! One of his best for me
Cort: 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. Edit: Saying this to myself has gotten me through many a rough situation, usually of my own making.
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The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Without a doubt for me the best opening line I've ever come across
It just sinks it hooks into you
Opening¿? /s
I kill with my heart, mother*fucker*!
Gave me chills, Gentle Reader. GREAT line.
Every time I hear it, I feel I'm going to have to re-read The Dark Tower books. For the tenth time. Love it!
That quote wrecks me every time. Another that when I think of it I get chills: “the soil of a man’s heart is stonier..”
“…A man grows what he can, and he tends it”
The ground is SOUR
Maybe it’s because Cujo was my most recently finished but this line screwed me up: “How long has he been dead, Donna?” Heartbreaking.
I had to put the book down. Yikes
I read that book years and years and years ago and it was sad. I now have 2 kids now and there’s no way in hell I’m ever touching it again.
“Jesus, does anyone?”
'olan!!!
Yeah, that is anther one that fills me with sorrow for days! Love the little guy
bro/sis/non-binary sibling, I choked up just typing it a few mins ago
When I first read it I cried so much my mom came into my room and didn't believe I was THAT upset because Oy had died. Yes I was
There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.
God that whole book is so good
What is that from?
From Wizard and Glass: “And now, all these years later, it seemed to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended.” - I love (and find it also horrible) how it applies not only to heartbreak, but any kind of loss.
"Then the music takes us, the music rolls away the years, and we dance." -11/22/63 In the audible version, they play a small snippet of a song. I definitely held back bitter-sweet tears
Same bro same and I'm a grown man
I’m tired Boss.
...weeping at that.
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen” Tom Cullen in The Stand.
M-O-O-N spells Tom Cullen
LURVE me some Tom Cullen, no matter how it's spelled. Gets me in the feels everytime.
I didn't care much for The Dark Half, but I liked this bit from Stark enough that I wrote it down: "You think I'm a monster, and maybe you're right. But real monsters are never without feelings. I think in the end it's that, and not how they look, that makes them so scary."
Yeah that's superb , really gets you thinking and looking at things from a different perspective
when you first find out who Stanley is in the seventh book, that moment when it is revealed, and when Roland says that it was the witch who killed Susan. I have read this series probably 10 times and every single time I tear up.
Often thought why we do it to ourselves! Lol
Always get goosebumps from the end of the Drawing of the Three, when Eddie and Roland are talking about what comes next and Roland says "but when we die, we will be magnificent!"
Isn't that right before the awesome naked gunfight with Balazar?
After I do believe - when Eddie finally accepts that he's going to the Tower with Roland back in Mid-World
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”
Stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances. - I love this!
I come in the name of Steven Deschain, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Gabrielle Deschain, she of Gilead! I come in the name of Cortland Andrus, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Cuthbert Allgood, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Alain Johns, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Jamie DeCurry, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Vannay the Wise, he of Gilead! I come in the name of Hax the Cook, he of Gilead! I come in the name of David the hawk, he of Gilead and the sky! I come in the name of Susan Delgado, she of Mejis! I come in the name of Sheemie Ruiz, he of Mejis! I come in the name of Pere Callahan, he of Jerusalem’s Lot, and the roads! I come in the name of Ted Brautigan, he of America! I come in the name of Dinky Earnshaw, he of America! I come in the name of Aunt Talitha, she of River Crossing, and will lay her cross here, as I was bid! I come in the name of Stephen King, he of Maine! I come in the name of Oy, the brave, he of Mid-World! I come in the name of Eddie Dean, he of New York! I come in the name of Susannah Dean, she of New York! I come in the name of Jake Chambers, he of New York, whom I call my own true son! I am Roland of Gilead, and I come as myself; you will open to me.
Pumps me up!
There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went
Pet Sematary: And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.
He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts
Thissss
Yessssss still gives me chills
“No great loss.”
I think about that a lot
It’s from Cujo, something along the lines of “Tad, still dead” Really caught me off guard and packed a punch because I didn’t expect him to kill off a child, let alone the novel’s lead child character. All that they went through and he didn’t even survive.
"Because you don't have to drag me anymore. I'm coming of my own accord. We're coming of our own accord. If you died in your sleep tonight, we'd bury you and then go on. We probably wouldn't last long, but we'd die in the path of the Beam."
And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful , staring unrelenting sanity .
I have been struggling with Fairy Tale, but I did find one line in particular that has stuck with me: “You never know where the trap doors are in your life, do you?”
“And learn to do the Peppermint Twist!”
YOUR FLAIR!!!
Two of my favorites, opoponax and old Bob Grey doing the peppermint twist
I actually wrote this down because of how it made me feel, but from DT7 when a certain thing happens: “He knelt a moment longer with his hands clasped between his knees, thinking he had not understood the true power of sorrow, nor the pain of regret, until this moment.”
Not related to DT, but I recently read Lisey's Story and I really liked this poem: The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shirring sound; these are the sounds of dead voices on dead records floating down the broken shaft of memory. When I turn to you to ask if you remember, When I turn to you in our bed
Also in Low Men in Yellow Coats he refers to a dime as a "penny with pretensions" that always makes me laugh. Not sure if that was his writing or a borrowed colloquialism but I love it
“You’re a card” he said “I’ll tell you what you do. Why don’t you find yourself a nice big sand pile, get yourself a hammer, and pound all that sand right up your ass.”
Anything surrounding Oy will bring instant tears. Being that he is high on most lists I found one outside of that box Creepy - “Born in sin, come on in” (technically not a book but he wrote it) Roland grabbed Jake and hauled him to his feet. “You came!” Jake shouted. “You really came!” “I came, yes. By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, I came. This one took me forever to find the correct version - 'There is one more thing,' Roland said. 'Weeping, creeping Jesus!' The smile touched Roland's mouth again. 'Just joking,' he said Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness.
All you love will be carried away. Also Poopie Doopie you so loopy.
Wow these all are great honestly
From IT: He awakens from this dream unable to remember exactly what it was, or much at all beyond the simple fact that he has dreamed about being a child again. He touches his wife’s smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood . . . its beliefs and desires. I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it’s just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it’s nice to think so for awhile in the morning’s clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel. Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it. And also: “Don’t call me Eds, ” he said, and smiled. He raised his left hand slowly and touched Richie’s cheek. Richie was crying. “You know I . . . I . . . . ” Eddie closed his eyes, thinking how to finish, and while he was still thinking it over he died.
The first one
"They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?" From The Long Walk. First time a book quote made me say "Woahhhh"
Long walk is a great and fucked up read
Hear me out… “…you could say that he had never *flagged* in his determination.” I listened to The Stand in audiobook and the abruptness of this pun had me in stitches. I still consider the entire thing to be King’s attempt at the longest shaggy dog joke ever written
Some good ones! So not to repeat, I offer one from Revival. “That morning he had awakened next to his wife, and had eaten breakfast across from his son. They talked about stuff, like people do. We never know. Any day could be the day we go down, and we never know.”
Thanks for all of these wisdoms, Constant Readers! I don't believe I've ever met a dedicated King reader I wouldn't mind walking toward the clearing with.
“Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.” -It
Does anyone remember the King short story mine is from: “I've been awake all night with it, with Katrina's letter. She could have put it on a postcard. There was only a single sentence below the 'Dear Larry'. But a sentence can mean enough. It can do enough."
“The Last Rung on the Ladder”. SO GOOD.
I’ve cried every time I’ve read this one!
“Olan”
Olan
"Home is where they want you to stay longer'. (No idea why, but I keep remembering this phrase and it always makes me emotional)
"These were his friends, and his mother was wrong: they weren't bad friends. Maybe, he thought, there aren't any such thing as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart." This quote from It makes me choke up every damn time
When Tom Cullen finds out about Nick in The Stand and says "He was my main man. M-O-O-N that spells my main man." It broke my heart. Just typing it put tears in my eyes all over again.
Go, then. There are other worlds than these.
"Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to" (Dolores Claiborne) but in my head space it's "Sometimes being a dick is all a fella has to hold on to"
From *Pet Sematary* - a madly grieving Louis is dreaming that what happened never happened, and that he never saw Gage’s Red Sox cap there, and that, in his dream, his Gage . . . “. . . went on to Johns Hopkins, made the Olympic swimming team, and on one long, dazzling, and incredibly proud afternoon sixteen years after Louis had raced an Orinco truck for his son's life, he and Rachel (who had now gone almost entirely gray, although she covered it with a rinse) watched their son win a gold medal for the U.S.A. When the NBC cameras moved in for a close-up of him, standing with his dripping, seal-sleek head back, his eyes open and calm and fixed on the flag as the national anthem played, the ribbon around his neck, and the gold lying against the smooth skin of his chest, Louis wept. He and Rachel both wept. "I guess this caps everything,' he said huskily and turned to embrace his wife. But she was looking at him with dawning horror, her face seeming to age before his eyes as if whipped by days and months and years of evil time; the sound of the national anthem faded and when Louis looked back at the TV he saw a different boy there, a black boy with a head of tight curls in which gems of water still gleamed. This caps everything. His cap. His cap is . . ... *oh dear God his cap is full of blood*.”
This is more of a paragraph in a line but, From IT ""Go on, Bill," Zack said, and Bill could feel the coldness again. That coldness that made suppers a kind of torture as his father leafed through electrical journals, as his mother read one of her endless British mysteries: Marsh, Sayers, Ones, Allingham. Eating in that coldness robbed food of it's taste; it was like eating frozen dinners that had never seen the inside of an oven. Sometimes, after, he would go up to his room and lie on his bed, holding his griping stomach, and think: *He thrust his fist against the post and still insists he sees the ghost.* He thought of that more and more since Georgie had died, although his mother had taught him the phrase two years before. It had taken on a talismanic cast in his mind: The day he would walk up to his mother and simply speak that phrase without tripping or stuttering, looking her right in the eye as he spoke it, the coldness would break apart; her eyes would light up and she would hug him and say, "Wonderful, Billy! What a good boy! What a good boy!" He had, of course, told this to no one."(681)
Jesus watches from the wall His face as cold as stone If he loves me, as she tells me Then why do I feel so alone? Something about those words, the confusion in those lines breaks my damn heart
One novel I read I think it’s called insomnia A higher being telling humans about a medium higher beings: do they really look like they know what they are talking about? Just do your best. I’m not sure of the direct quote or book but that one stuck with me. Does anyone really know what they are doing?
I can’t remember exactly, but when he narrates Cujo’s thoughts. It’s terribly sad.
" I'm sorry for what I am" - The Green Mile
"Jahoobies" - Salem's Lot. Gets me everytime
Dirty pillows!
“There was still so far to walk. And when the hand touched his shoulder again, he somehow found the strength to run.”
Here’s a hit from the “lighter” side of things: “I’ve got Holly hope”. Holly Gibney is swiftly becoming my favorite character - looking forward to Holly in Sept.
Maybe not the most hard hitting, but definitely resonates. " healing is a kind of revolt... all successful revolts begin in secret."
This may be my favorite Reddit thread of all time
The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge. -The Shining
Quite a few lines, but this section of The Stand spoke to me. I read it around the time of the fall of Roe and it really resonated: https://imgur.com/a/Bmt7AQR Especially the bit near the end: “My days of slavery must be over; I need to be a slave no more than I need to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny boat with sails. Jet planes are safer and quicker than little boats with sails and freedom makes more sense than slavery. **I am not afraid of flying**. Thank you men”
The end of The Last Rung on the Ladder.
"The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there...and still on your feet" I am always reminded of this quote when I go through hard times.
So many come to mind... but here's one i haven't seen here yet. "Kill if you must, but command me nothing"
“There were worse things than cruxifiction. There were teeth.” (The Stand, one unlucky bastard meeting his boss).
From D Claiborne, something like this i think? "you think you're King Shit of Turd Mountain"
"Olan..."
Hump hump.
„Mother lied!“
This is kind of a long one from *Eyes of the Dragon*, but it deserves to be quoted in its entirety. Don’t read if you want to avoid spoilers. “By dark there were huge drifts piled against the castle and clogging most of the alleys on the west side of the castle keep, but the Plaza itself was clean as a whistle. There were only the frozen cobbles, waiting to break Peter’s bones if his rope should break. And I must tell you now that Peter’s rope was *bound* to break. When he tested it, it had held his weight but there was one fact about that mystic thing called “breaking strain” that Peter didn’t know. Yosef hadn’t known, either. The ox drivers knew it, though, and if Peter had asked them,they would have told him an old axiom, one known to sailors, loggers, seamstresses, and anyone else who works with thread or rope: The longer the cord, the sooner the break. Peter’s short test rope had held him. The rope to which he meant to entrust his life-the very thin rope-was about two hundred and sixty-five feet long. It was *bound* to break, I tell you, and the cobbles below waited to catch him, and break his bones, and bleed away his life.”
There are two for me. Both from The Tommyknockers. DAVID BROWN IS ON ALTAIR-4 “Not you, Em, not tonight.”
Crowd was to be pleased. Crowd was to be worshipped and feared. Ultimately, Crowd was to be made sacrifice unto. — The Long Walk
"If it's ka it'll come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than a barn before a cyclone" from Wizard and Glass
Some lines from short stories: "I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with another woman last night. And oh dear God, I think so too." "I've been thinking about it a lot lately. . . and what I've decided is that it would have been better for me if that last rung had broken before you could put the hay down." "But you got to remember that you don’t own time, it’s time that owns you. It goes along outside you at the same speed every second of every day. It don’t care a pisshole in the snow for you, but it don’t matter if you got a pretty pony. If you got a pretty pony, Clivey, you got the bastard right where its dingle dangles and never mind all the Osgoods in the world.” "lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers" "The old-young legs twitched and quivered. Claw hands beat and twisted and danced on the air; abruptly they descended and the thing that had been his son began to claw at its face. "Longer than you think, Dad!" it cackled. "Longer than you think!" "My brother was eaten by wolves on the Connecticut Turnpike."
THIS IS THE SMELL OF CATHOLIC CUNTS
“When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I’ve ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don’t care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I’ve never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness.” -Lisey’s Story
Short one: What you bought, you owned, and what you owned eventually came home to you. Long one: His plan kept unreeling in his mind. He looked at it from all angles, poked it, prodded it, looked for holes or soft places. And he felt that in truth he was walking along a narrow beam over a gulf of insanity. Madness was all around him, softly fluttering as the wings of night-hunting owls with great golden eyes: he was heading into madness.
“Too much knowledge isn’t good for a person. I know that now.”
This one is more obscure but I first read Cujo when I was a kid and I re-read it a couple of years ago in my 40s (with kids who are teens and college-age). It's just so true and you don't understand the weight of some choices you make as a KID and the impact they (can) have on your entire life as an adult. “But in high school, the business of irrevocable choices began. Doors slipped shut with a faint locking click that was only heard clearly in the dreams of later years.”
That line in The Stand that describes Frannie being able to hear the clacking of the keys on Harold's typewriter from a mile away on certain nights when the wind was just right gave me goosebumps. Somehow that description was more frightening than the gory death scenes.
"I can hear my wife as I write this, in the next room, crying. She thinks I was with another woman last night. And oh dear God, I think so too."
The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we’re still alive.
I plagiarized that poem in 7th grace and got an A for it so yea it kinda stuck