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When a lot of interesting shit was happening, time seemed to go by fast. If you got stuck with nothing but the usual boring shit, it slowed down. And when everything stopped happening, time apparently quit altogether.
“No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves, don’t we?”
“Mayhap. If all goes well.” “If,” Roland said. “An old teacher of mine used to call it the only word a thousand letters long.”
Roland touched his temple, his lips, the corner of one eye, his lips again. “Head clear. Mouth shut. See much. Say little.”
We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back.”
Later it all became simpler. Later he came to understand that he wasn’t drinking too much because he was spiritually unsettled but spiritually unsettled because he was drinking too much.
Good Christ, just the alcohol-related loss of the REM sleep was enough to screw you up righteously, but somehow you never thought of that while you were active. Booze turned your thought-processes into something akin to that circus routine where all the clowns come piling out of the little car. When you looked back in sobriety, the things you’d said and done made you wince (“I’d sit in a bar solving all the problems of the world, then not be able to find my car in the parking lot,”
It’s a wholly illogical but nonetheless powerful belief that things will change for the better in a new place; that the urge to self-destruct will magically disappear.
The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we’re still alive, after all.
“Perhaps, aye. But the heart must call for its rights, too, and a man or woman who doesn’t listen is a fool. Sometimes ’tis best to swing on the rope, even if it’s too dark to see if the hay’s there or not.”
When one knows and one does not, the one who does not must bow his head and the one who does must take responsibility.
a grateful alcoholic doesn’t get drunk and a grateful addict doesn’t get stoned.
“Things always look clearer when we see them over our shoulder, don’t they?”
He had great faith in Oy. Or maybe it was love. Or maybe those things were the same.
“Thee’s a good man, Roland of Gilead.” He considered this, then slowly shook his head. “All my life I’ve had the fastest hands, but at being good I was always a little too slow.”
