Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4)

by Stephen King

“YOU ARE KA-TET; ONE MADE FROM MANY.

The same secret surety, he supposed, that he had harbored every time he picked up a pair of dice in some sharpie’s back-bedroom crap game, every time he called for a hit on seventeen while playing blackjack. That feeling that you couldn’t go wrong because you were you, the best, the one and only.

“Blaine, what has eyes yet cannot see?” “THERE ARE FOUR ANSWERS,” Blaine replied. “NEEDLES, STORMS, POTATOES, AND A TRUE LOVER.”

mad, mechanical laughter that made Susannah think of funhouses in sleazy amusement parks

he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.

There was a peculiar smile on Eddie’s face, a peculiar shine in Eddie’s eyes, and Jake found that hope hadn’t deserted him, after all. It suddenly flowered anew in his mind, red and hot and vivid. Like . . . well, like a rose. A rose in the full fever of its summer.

his reflexes had been replaced with razor-blades.

it seemed to him that the most horrible fact of human existence was that broken hearts mended.

“Usually sponsored by bankruptcy lawyers who look like shorthair terriers.

He tried a smile, but it felt stiff and unnatural on his face and he put it away again.

Half an hour ago, he wouldn’t have believed that a sound could be as physically upsetting, as . . . well, the smell of rotting meat, say, but he believed it now.

We’ll get there in time. No need to live in trouble until trouble comes.”

“To wait until my shadow had grown hair on its face and haunted Marten in his dreams.”

Men! She could not understand why so many women feared them. Hadn’t the gods made them with the most vulnerable part of their guts hanging right out of their bodies, like a misplaced bit of bowel?

she had sung. Because her heart demanded it.

The moon got into my blood, I suppose.

“I’ve lived alone a long time, with no mistress but myself, and once it begins, my tongue goes where it will.”

I’m sorry to hear he’s come to the clearing at the end of the path, Susan. Will you accept my condolence?”

that people who set on by saying Let me be honest with you were apt to go on by telling you straight-faced that rain fell up, money grew on trees, and babies were brought by the Grand Featherex.

That smile was dangerous, she thought—a quicksand smile if ever there was one. Easy to wander in; perhaps more difficult to wander back out.

She had never thought of it quite like that, but now, in a way listening with his ears instead of her own, she thought he was right.

If it’s ka, it’ll come like a wind, and your plans will stand before it no more than a barn before a cyclone.

Roland was far from the relentless creature he would eventually become, but the seeds of that relentlessness were there—small, stony things that would, in their time, grow into trees with deep roots . . . and bitter fruit. Now one of these seeds cracked open and sent up its first sharp blade.

what he breathed out, she breathed in.

Roland decided he’d had enough tea and hypocrisy for one morning.

“He’s just an old cowboy, and can’t quit shovelling horseshit even when he’s away from his beloved nags.

where he could put his false face aside before the real one beneath could grow hot enough to set it afire.

and for the first time his voice had come unanchored a little, wavering in his throat.

its edges so splintered it looked as if it had been whacked into reality by an ill-tempered god wielding a hatchet.

“You will make the most beautiful Reap-Girl that ever was,” he said, and the clear sincerity in his voice

“But he’s not to be blamed, so I say, for a dog will follow his natural instincts, if the way is open for him to do so.

Although he didn’t know it then, he would sleep badly for the rest of his life.

He came up from the threshold of real sleep, fighting his way back to clarity as a diver kicks for the surface of a quarry.

Bird and bear and hare and fish, Give my love her fondest wish.”

long, tall, and ugly made a habit of being right.

Those in the grip of a strong drug—heroin, devil grass, true love—often