Later

by Stephen King

most of the other emotions seem to leave when they die. Even the love never seemed all that strong to me. I don’t like to tell you this, but hate stays stronger and lasts longer.

“And the glass slipper wasn’t glass at all, Jamie. That seems to have been a translation error which has been immortalized by Walt Disney, that homogenizer of fairy tales. The slipper was actually made of squirrel fur.”

I think only your mother can truly make you feel lower than whale shit.

Tell you what, the worst part of growing up is how it shuts you up.

Van Helsing said that a vampire couldn’t come in unless you invited him. If it was true of vampires, it stood to reason (at least to thirteen-year-old me it did) that it was true of other supernatural beings. Like the one inside of Therriault, keeping him from disappearing after a few days like all the other dead people. I checked Wikipedia to see if Mr. Stoker just made that up, but he didn’t. It was in lots of the vampire legends. Now (later!) I can see it makes symbolic sense. If we have free will, then you have to invite evil in.

And anybody who has to say they’re not afraid is lying. I didn’t have to wait until later to learn that, I knew it at thirteen.

My mother refused to use Uber. She said they weren’t New York. Taxis were New York.

That thing is from outside the universe. There are horrors there that no man can conceive of. If you truck with it you risk death, or madness, or the destruction of your very soul.”

listening to oldies on Pandora.

the agony of choosing the right clothes to wear to school so you don’t get laughed at,