The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2)

by Stephen King

At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that. I didn’t know it in 1966 and ’67, and if I had, I wouldn’t have cared. I could imagine—barely—being forty, but fifty? No. Sixty? Never! Sixty was out of the question. And at nineteen, that’s just the way to be.

He walked out of nowhere toward nowhere, a man from another time who, it seemed, had reached a point of pointless ending.

No, sugar was not cocaine, but Roland could not understand why anyone would want cocaine or any other illegal drug, for that matter, in a world where such a powerful one as sugar was so plentiful and cheap.

Don’t make the mistake of putting your heart near his hand.

What great wrong did you ever do that you should inspire such terrible loyalty in so many?

“What’s on the other side of that door for me?” Eddie asked the gunslinger quietly. “Go on and tell me. If you can tell me, maybe I’ll come. But if you lie, I’ll know.” “Probably death,” the gunslinger said. “But before that happens, I don’t think you’ll be bored. I want you to join me on a quest. Of course, all will probably end in death—death for the four of us in a strange place. But if we should win through . . .” His eyes gleamed. “If we win through, Eddie, you’ll see something beyond all the beliefs of all your dreams.”

Fault always lies in the same place, my fine babies: with him weak enough to lay blame.

One of these men had been a creature the gunslinger believed to be a demon himself, a creature that pretended to be a man and called itself Flagg.

“We are going to go, Eddie. We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end we will stand.”