More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Because then, if he decided he did want the Talisman, he could always send you in to get it, couldn’t he?”
He felt strong hands fold around his heart: Jason’s hands, the Talisman’s hands.
“Our troubles are going to have troubles with us,” said Richard, quoting—surely unconsciously—from Dr. Seuss.
Morgan of Orris was raping a passage through the worlds again, becoming Morgan Sloat . . .
Travellin Jack, if she dies . . .” He levelled his ruined face at the boy. “Then we got black horror in both worlds.
“Destinies. That’s what all this is about. More destinies, more lives, than you know.
A man in a black suit was just stepping through the door of the wreck of the Kingsland Motel—he was trying, Jack saw, to keep from looking at the black hotel.
Is this the Man in Black from the Gunslinger?
The man’s dark hair swayed around his shoulders—hair, black suit, and sunglasses, he looked like the Angel of Death.
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he should lose his own son?
If Morgan needed a kamikaze pilot, Sunlight Gardener would be the first one to the planes.
What does it profit a man? It profits a man the world, and the world is enough . . . or, in this case, worlds. Two to start with, and more when and if they play out. I can rule them all if I like—I can be something like the God of the Universe.
We in the Black Hotel care only for the Talisman—the nexus of all possible worlds. You’ve come as a burglar to rob us of what is ours, and we tell you once more: we have other ways of dealing with fushing feeves like you. And if you persist, you’ll find out what they are—you’ll find out for yourself.
You should have left while there was still time . . . . . . because now, little boy, your time is up.
You’re reaching up to hold a universe of worlds, a cosmos of good, Jack
The weight of the Talisman suddenly seemed immense, the weight of dead bodies.
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 . . .
We’re going out like paying guests. I feel like I’ve paid plenty.
He is as light as a thistle. He has his own cancer. He’s had it all his life. Morgan Sloat is radioactive with evil and Richard is dying of the fallout.
He lifted the globe in his hands, as if as an offering to the ocean.
The gray-golden cloud from the heart of the Talisman was lengthening over his mother’s body, coating her in a translucent but slightly opaque, delicately moving membrane.
(for alive as birds, as alive as the worlds contained within the Talisman, there came to him the sounds of trombones and trumpets, the cries of saxophones; the joined voices of frogs and turtles and gray doves singing, The people who know my magic have filled the land with smoke; there came to him the voices of Wolfs making Wolfmusic at the moon. Water spanked against the bow of a ship and a fish spanked the surface of a lake with the side of its body and a rainbow spanked the ground and a travelling boy spanked a drop of spittle to tell him which way to go and a spanked baby squinched its
...more
—for a moment his mother was the Talisman.
Most of the characters who perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worthwhile to take up the story again and see what . . . they turned out to be; therefore, it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present.
