You Like It Darker

by Stephen King

I thought to myself, there’s time. We always think that, I guess. Then time runs out.

It was the look of a man who could say quite a lot on the subject of how he and his friend Butch had achieved fame and fortune… but who chose not to. Who chose, in fact, to keep it close.

Robert Frost said home is the place that, when you go there, they have to take you in. It’s also the place you start from, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, it’s where you finish up.

People love to tell stories about them—I knew Laird Carmody when, I knew Butchie LaVerdiere when, but none of them explain what they became.

My mother’s word came to me, and I almost said it: hogwash.

“Maybe they went down to the crossroads,” she said. “You know, like Robert Johnson was supposed to have done. Made a deal with the devil.”

Your father looks like he saw a ghost.

Finally, at my urging, we cleaned out the bedroom where they had spent over 21,000 nights.

good enough to great—I didn’t know that, either. But I found out.

the last leaf on the Carmody family tree, and now turning an autumnal brown. Sic transit gloria mundi.

I remember thinking that the fading of hopes and ambitions was mostly painless. That was good, but it was also rather horrible. I wanted to be a writer, but I was beginning to think being a good one was beyond me. If it was, the world would continue to spin. You relaxed your hand… opened your fingers… and something flew away. I remember thinking maybe that’s all right.

That pitcher has never excaped my memory.

Because we were together, and grown men, we laughed.

“When intelligence outraces emotional stability, it’s always just a matter of time.”

“Because of the noise in your lives. Because of your thoughts. Thoughts are pointless. Worse, dangerous.”

“I’m sorry for you. Your world is a living breath in a universe that is mostly filled with deadlights.”

Well, I tell myself, we call it a gift and we call ourselves gifted, but gifts are never really earned, are they? Only given. Talent is grace made visible.

It’s all right to want what you can’t have. You learn to live with it. I tell myself that, and mostly I believe it.

Before rising every morning, he reminded himself to enjoy the day.

“Thank you, sir. I don’t know what your name is, but you’ve helped me so much.”

usually the kitchen after supper was like Vegas, what got said there stayed there,

This is what you get for trying to help, this is what you get.

arithmomania,

no good deed goes unpunished.”

Finn had a hard go of it from the very beginning.

Wouldn’t have happened again in a thousand years, his grandma said.

Finn thought what he’d learned that day was Stick to the Twisty.

For every stroke of bad luck God deals out, his grandma had said, he gives two strokes of the good.

The world is full of rattlesnakes. Sometimes you step on them and they don’t bite. Sometimes you step over them and they bite anyway.

All I can say to you is beware of dreams. They’re dangerous. I found out.

2 MILES TO THE ANSWER MAN, it read. Phil grinned, then laughed out loud. It would be nice if there really was such a guy, he thought. I could certainly use a few answers.

Tempus fugit,

ALWAYS REMEMBER OTHERS HAVE IT WORSE

Horror stories are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic. A paradox, but a true one. I believe it is the unimaginative among us, those incapable of appreciating the dark side of make-believe, who have been responsible for most of the world’s woes.