Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5)

by Stephen King

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.

We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back.”

Callahan knew stuff Eddie thought no one else could possibly know: the sadness of Dixie cups rolling across the pavement, the rusty hopelessness of that sign on the gas pumps, the look of the human eye in the hour before dawn. Most of all about how sometimes you had to have it.

“They never go far,” Roland agreed. His cigarette was done; the dry paper and crumbles of tobacco had disappeared up to his fingernails in two puffs. “Ghosts always haunt the same house.”

The goodbyes we speak and the goodbyes we hear are the goodbyes that tell us we’re still alive, after all.

“Wandering’s the most addictive drug there is, I think, and every hidden road leads on to a dozen more.”

“You’re cruel!” he bursts out. Walter’s eyes widen, and for a moment he looks deeply hurt. This may be absurd, but Callahan is looking into the man’s deep eyes and feels sure the emotion is nonetheless genuine. And the surety robs him of any last hope that all this might be a dream, or a final brilliant interval before true death. In dreams—his, at least—the bad guys, the scary guys, never have complex emotions. “I am what ka and the King and the Tower have made me. We all are. We’re caught.” Callahan remembers the dream-west through which he traveled: the forgotten silos, the neglected sunsets and long shadows, his own bitter joy as he dragged his trap behind him, singing until the jingle of the very chains that held him became sweet music. “I know,” he says. “Yes, I see you do. Keep moving.”

He had great faith in Oy. Or maybe it was love. Or maybe those things were the same.

“My Da’ and Cuthbert’s Da’ used to have a rule between em: first the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire.”

“Now I think that all of us are born with a hole in our hearts, and we go around looking for the person who can fill it.