The Long Walk

by Stephen King

“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.

But of course it had hurt. It had hurt before, in the worst, rupturing way, knowing there would be no more you but the universe would roll on just the same, unharmed and unhampered.

He goggled in that myopic, defenseless way that people with very poor eyesight have when their glasses are off.

Garraty pulled himself closer together inside his damp clothes and did not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blew.

“I didn’t know much when I started, and I know less now.”

A mule doesn’t like to plow. But he likes carrots. So you hang a carrot in front of his eyes. A mule without a carrot gets exhausted. A mule with a carrot spends a long time being tired.

“The reason all of this is so horrible,” McVries said, “is because it’s just trivial. You know? We’ve sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities. Olson, he was trivial. He was magnificent, too, but those things aren’t mutually exclusive. He was magnificent and trivial. Either way, or both, he died like a bug under a microscope.”

“Any game looks straight if everyone is being cheated at once.”

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