Duma Key

by Stephen King

In the end we always wear out our worries.

(successful retirement has its privileges),

Even depressed and in more or less constant pain, I was averse to being taken advantage of.

There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.

Healing is a kind of revolt, and as I think I’ve said, all successful revolts begin in secret.

palms of my hands, from clenching my fists.

Still palms, not palm.

I could have told Linnie that preferring Ilse was like growing up lefthanded – something over which I had no control – and that would only have made it worse, even though it was the truth. Maybe especially because it was the truth.

Love conveys its own psychic powers, doesn’t it?

The only religions I don’t like are the ones that insist their God is bigger than your God.

‘Meantime, do the day and let the day do you!’

And clear communication between selves – the surface self and the deep self is what I mean – is the enemy of self-doubt. It slays confusion.

‘Honey, live like you got to live. Chuck Berry, nineteen sixty-nine.’

Friendships founded on laughter are always fortuitous.’

a life without books is a thirsty life,

Did she understand that even genius palls, when taken in large doses?

I’m busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest

about how we had stumbled into the Iraq mess (the short answer appeared to have W for a middle initial and a dick for a Vice President).

You told your children be careful, very careful, that a stranger could mean danger, and maybe they believed it, but kids from nice homes had also been raised to believe safety was their birthright.

God punishes us for what we can’t imagine.

Sometimes understanding bypasses the brain and proceeds directly from the heart.

He says you should never trust a person who prays in public.

Sometimes there’s no time to decide what’s the best answer. Sometimes you can only give the true answer.

terror above, barely held-in shit below. What a lovely combination.

Florida’s full of old people – they don’t call it God’s waiting room for nothing

And if you can’t be an artist, feed em, care for em, and make sure they have a place to come in out of the rain.”

Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.’

My accident really taught me just one thing: the only way to go on is to go on. To say I can do this even when you know you can’t.

‘So what do we do? Go back? Because I have an idea that if we go back, ’chacho, we’ll never summon the testicular fortitude to return.’

Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won’t carry a quitter.