The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)

by Stephen King

(say sorry),

At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions.

Another thing about being nineteen, do it please ya: it is the age, I think, where a lot of us somehow get stuck (mentally and emotionally, if not physically).

he said he was really, really glad that I was still alive. (I get this a lot, and it beats the shit out of ‘Why the hell didn’t you die?’)

I received hundreds of ‘pack your bags, we’re going on a guilt trip’

also revised the work as a whole, mostly to acknowledge the AIDS epidemic, which blossomed (if that is the word) between the first issue of The Stand and the publication of the revised version eight or nine years later. The result was a volume about 100,000 words longer than the original.

The first was that The Gunslinger had been written by a very young man, and had all the problems of a very young man’s book. The second was that it contained a great many errors and false starts, particularly in light of the volumes that followed.* The third was that The Gunslinger did not even sound like the later books – it was, frankly, rather difficult to read.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Water if God willed it, even in the desert.

The gunslinger occasionally moaned with the wind. The stars were as indifferent to this as they were to wars, crucifixions, resurrections. This also would have pleased him.

only living because it was a habit.

And now I’m going to kill you, if for no other reason than I don’t want to have to sleep with one eye open.

He would probably pay for having spoken up in kindness.

The eyes were damned, the staring, glaring eyes of one who sees but does not see, eyes ever turned inward to the sterile hell of dreams beyond control, dreams unleashed, risen out of the stinking swamps of the unconscious.

The man in black did this.

He looked at her steadily. The scar would not show in the dark.

She led him upstairs. There was no light to hide their act.

The room held her scent, fresh lilac, pathetic.

He died in his own vomit with that grin on his face.’ ‘A nice story.’

Sheb, drunk nearly to the point of senselessness, intoxicated and horny with his own continued existence,

She was afraid of her needs. They were capricious and beyond her control.

‘Don’t talk trivialities. You’re here with death.’

She felt suddenly easy in her mind, as if she had taken a drug.

Thunder racketed the sky with a sound like some god coughing.

The smell of rot and excrement and decay billowed up in choking waves.

You want to know about Death. I left him a word. That word is NINETEEN. If you say it to him his mind will be opened. He will tell you what lies beyond. He will tell you what he saw. The word is NINETEEN Knowing will drive you mad. But sooner or later you will ask. You won’t be able to help yourself. Have a nice day! Walter o’ Dim P.S. The word is NINETEEN. You will try to forget but sooner or later it will come out of your mouth like vomit. NINETEEN.

And oh dear God, she knew that she would. Already it trembled on her lips. Nineteen, she would say – Nort, listen: Nineteen. And the secrets of Death and the land beyond would be opened to her. Sooner or later you will ask.

She had never seen the ocean, never would.

‘A time will come when it won’t pass.’

Because, if given a knife and a hand in which to hold it, the mind would eventually eat itself. Not because it wanted to; because it did not want to.

‘I can make you strong—’ ‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that.’

In bed again. ‘She won’t see you,’ Allie said. She sounded frightened. ‘She doesn’t see anybody. She only comes out on Sunday evenings to scare the hell out of everybody.’

‘If I tell you, will you make love to me?’ ‘I’ll make love to you, anyway. But I want to know.’

He only saw her once more alive.

Blood and brains flew in streamers.

He was stabbed in the ass with what might have been a meat-fork.

He had shot and killed thirty-nine men, fourteen women, and five children. He had shot and killed everyone in Tull.

Blood sacrifice. All the blood needed to do was run . . . and run . . . and run.

O Jesus, I’m far gone.

‘I don’t like people. They fuck me up.’

He has no friends, only acquaintances. He has never bothered to think about this, but it hurts him.

He is too young to have learned to hate himself yet, but that seed is already there; given time, it will grow, and bear bitter fruit.

While you travel with the boy, the man in black travels with your soul in his pocket

Time’s the thief of memory:

This wasn’t the way it had happened – he hadn’t even been there – but dreams had their own logic, didn’t they?

His teeth felt strange in his head, tiny tombstones set in pink moist earth.

A demon has infested him. The name of the demon is HEROIN.

The boy is your gate to the man in black. The man in black is your gate to the three. The three are your way to the Dark Tower.

What shall I call you, then? Star-slut? Whore of the Winds?

Have your way with me, bitch.