Different Seasons: Four Novellas

by Stephen King

Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living or get busy dying.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words

That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

Nobody’s garden had done doodly-squat that year, and the big displays of canning stuff in the Castle Rock Red & White were still there, gathering dust. No one had anything to put up that summer, except maybe dandelion wine.

A little nod to Ray Bradbury, perhaps?

Teddy picked up his cards, gave them one brief look, and said: “I knock.” “You four-eyed pile of shit!” Chris cried. “The pile of shit has a thousand eyes,” Teddy said gravely, and both Chris and I cracked up.

When the car rolls through the dips in the road there is groundfog, waiting for evening when it will creep out of these pockets and take over the whole River Road.

No, it’s not a very good story—its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

Somebody’ll have to walk down there and get some hamburger and some tonics while the others rest.”

"tonics"… New England for soda

those fellows who were always painting pictures of clockfaces lying limply in the crotches of trees

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, did you?

It was only quarter to three, but it felt much later. It was too hot and too much had happened.

“So he gets this idea,” I said. “The greatest revenge idea a kid ever had.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Teddy asked. “It means it’s the end. When you don’t know what happens next, that’s the end.”

It’s like God gave you something, all those stories you can make up, and He said: This is what we got for you, kid. Try not to lose it. But kids lose everything unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks are too fucked up to do it then maybe I ought to.”

“Your friends drag you down, Gordie. Don’t you know that?” He pointed at Vern and Teddy, who were standing and waiting for us to catch up. They were laughing about something; in fact, Vern was just about busting a gut. “Your friends do. They’re like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can’t save them. You can only drown with them.”

Chris Chambers - xynic ...or realist...

There’s something horrible and fascinating about the way dark comes to the woods, its coming unsoftened by headlights or streetlights or houselights or neon. It comes with no mothers’ voices, calling for their kids to leave off and come on in now, to herald it.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell them about the deer, but I ended up not doing it. That was one thing I kept to myself. I’ve never spoken or written of it until just now, today. And I have to tell you that it seems a lesser thing written down, damn near inconsequential.

The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It’s hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.

What I did tell him was: “I was thinking of something else, that’s all.” The most important things are the hardest things to say.

Somewhere, attached to that hand, was the rest of Ray Brower.

The train had knocked him out of his Keds just as it had knocked the life out of his body.

“We’ll get you,” Ace said. “We’re not going to forget it, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is big time, baby.”

It happens. Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant,

“There will be more tales?” “Here, sir, there are always more tales.”