The Long Walk

by Richard Bachman

“To me the Universe was all void of Life, or Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?” —Thomas Carlyle

“The pump don’t work ’Cause the vandals took the handle.”

“I’m John Carter,” Olson said. “My home is Barsoom, Mars.”

🤭

“Your Plan and the stuff that comes out of my asshole bear a suspicious resemblance to each other,”

😂 😷

“How the hell did we get on this?”

“There, Barkovitch, you’re not a pest anymore. Now you’re a murderer.”

Words, can kill just as easy a bullet.

He wondered how people could ride over this road all the other days of the year and not see the pattern of life and death in that white paint.

We’ve sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities.

“None of that makes it right,” McVries said. “They come from New Mexico,” Baker said. “It’s an abortion,” McVries said with finality, and Garraty tended to agree.

Isn’t it too bad the great truths are all such lies?”

The dead are orphans.

Terribly sad way to think of it.

“Sorry, you’re not pushing the right button anymore.”

👏

The wind howled and ripped with all the young, unknowing cruelty of spring. It lifted caps from the crowd and whirled them, saucerlike, in brief and violent arcs across the whitewash-colored sky.

Eyes blind, supplicating hands held out before him as if for alms, Garraty walked toward the dark figure. And when the hand touched his shoulder again, he somehow found the strength to run.