Duma Key

by Stephen King

A hurt body and mind aren’t just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion. That my mind had been as badly hurt as my body was a thing I only came to realize once I was alone and all other voices dropped away.

I’d forgotten how quick she was, and how well she read me. Love conveys its own psychic powers, doesn’t it?

Pain is the biggest power of love.

I saw no one and spoke to no one but myself. The extraneous dropped away almost entirely, and when that happens, you begin to hear yourself clearly. 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.

“You know what I think? Friendships founded on laughter are always fortuitous.”

Sometimes—often, I think—telling stories that are embarrassing or even downright crazy is easier when you’re telling them to a stranger.

God punishes us for what we can’t imagine.

“Anything I can ever do for you,” he said. “Ever. In my life. You call, I come. You ask, I do. It’s a blank check. Are you clear on that?” “Yes,” I said. I was clear on something else, as well: when someone offers you a blank check, you must never, ever cash it. That wasn’t a thing I thought out. Sometimes understanding bypasses the brain and proceeds directly from the heart.

She says a person can’t close the door on the past, she can only make amends and go on.

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

I remembered thinking about suicide, and the myriad roads leading into the dark: turnpikes and secondary highways and shaggy little forgotten lanes.

We can’t imagine time running out, and God punishes us for what we can’t imagine.

“Quién sabe?

Someday, if your life is long and your thinking machinery stays in gear, you’ll live to remember the last good thing that ever happened to you. That’s not pessimism talking, just logic. I hope I haven’t run out of good things yet—there would be no purpose in living if I believed I had—but it’s been a long time between. I remember the last one clearly.

The loss of memory isn’t always the problem; sometimes—maybe even often—it’s the solution.

life is a wheel, and if you wait long enough, it always comes back around to where it started.