The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2)

by Stephen King

A demon has infested him. The name of the demon is HEROIN.

This is a mystery, a most marvellous 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.

A demon has infested him. The name of the demon is HEROIN.

Because the difference between seeing and not seeing can be the difference between living and dying.

Everybody talks about going cold turkey, Henry had said, but before you get there, you gotta go cool turkey.

In some ways cool turkey’s worse than cold turkey, Henry said. At least when you make it to cold turkey, you KNOW you’re gonna puke, you KNOW you’re going to shake, you KNOW you’re gonna sweat until it feels like you’re drowning in it. Cool turkey is, like, the curse of expectation.

The heroin had hit – he had the sniffles to prove it – but he sure couldn’t feel it.

The prisoner saw nothing; the gunslinger saw everything.

Roland could not understand why anyone would want cocaine or any other illegal drug, for that matter, in a world where such a powerful one as sugar was so plentiful and cheap.

You did yourself ill to feel well of those to whom ill must eventually be done.

‘God pisses down the back of your neck every day but only drowns you once,’

For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all.’

Never trust a junkie.

Henry’s chin floated down to his breastbone and then slowly rose once more – it was like watching a soaked log not quite ready to give in and sink for good.

Don’t let me die naked and needing a fix, God, he prayed,

I’ll die, but please, just let me have one more—

What great wrong did you ever do that you should inspire such terrible loyalty in so many?

There is no time in hell, and each of them was in his own private hell: Roland the hell of the fever and infection, Eddie the hell of withdrawal.

‘Why don’t you just eat shit and die?’

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.

‘He was always scared, but he always came back.’

It was the only thing people like Henry did know how to use. First they changed trust into need, then they changed need into a drug, and once that was done, they – what was Eddie’s word for it? – push. Yes. They pushed it.

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?

He guessed that Eddie knew there were a thousand excuses for getting high but no reasons,

Where’s the rest of you?

Roland’s Lady of the Shadows was, black or white, one rude bitch.

He was going to get out because Popeye’s motto was That’s all I can stands and I can’t stand nummore, and Popeye was as right as rain.

He had saved her life. Her mental problems were not his concern.

he was reminded again of The Shining, where you saw what the little boy was seeing as he rode his trike through the hallways of that haunted hotel.

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.

‘Were you really a heroin addict?’ ‘Am,’ he said. ‘It’s like being an alcoholic, or ’basing. It’s not a thing you ever get over. I used to hear that and go “Yeah, yeah, right, right,” in my head, you know, but now I understand. I still want it, and I guess part of me will always want it, but the physical part has passed.’

She was screaming that she would kill them both; they could try and rape her but she would kill them with her cunt, they would see, that was one bad son of a bitching cave with teeth around the entrance and if they wanted to try and explore it they would find out.

‘I’ll loosen the ropes a bit if you’ll be still,’ Roland told her. ‘Suck shit out my ass, mahfah!’ ‘I don’t understand if that means yes or no.’

Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover.

But never in his life had he felt such a deadly need for sleep. It would take him soon enough; if he didn’t give in willingly, sleep would rape him.

Men like him seemed to find trouble easy as a bitch in heat finds a randy hound.

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 newest wonder was simply that for these people, wonder had run out: here, in a place of miracles, he saw only dull faces and plodding bodies.

Take this crotch on the phone now. Mrs Rathbun. Ranting that she would sue him if he didn’t fill her goddamned Valium prescription and right now, RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT.