The Talisman

by Stephen King

They could not be put into ordinary sentences, for ordinary sentences made everything seem rational.

“Talisman be given unto your hand, Travellin Jack. Not too big, not too small, she look just like a crystal ball. Travellin Jack, ole Travellin Jack, you be goin to California to bring her back. But here’s your burden, here’s your cross: drop her, Jack, and all be lost.”

It gonna be your burden but you got to be bigger than your burden.”

he had been encumbered by sentimental notions of loyalty and honor, corrupted by the stuff you told kids to get them halfway civilized before you finally tore the blindfold off their eyes.

Jack began to cry. He did not weep hysterically or shriek as people do when they mask rage with tears; he cried in the steady sobs of one who has discovered just how alone he is, and is apt to remain for a long time yet. He cried because all safety and reason seemed to have departed from the world. Loneliness was here, a reality; but in this situation, insanity was also too much of a possibility.

The man whose life you save is your responsibility for the rest of your life.

they comforted each other as well as they could, and, as you probably know from your own bitter experience, that is never quite good enough.

“Our troubles are going to have troubles with us,” said Richard, quoting—surely unconsciously—from Dr. Seuss.

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son?

It occurred to him dimly that you could only express your ownership of a thing in terms of how freely you could give it up