Firestarter

by Stephen King

People with no money disappeared in New York; they dropped into the sidewalks, never to be seen again.

“Life is short and pain is long and we were all put on this earth to help each other.

“Winter is coming,” he said to Cap. “These old bones dread it.”

What is it that the eyes of the dying see?

“It’s gonna be all right,” he told her, not really believing it, knowing as every adult knows in his secret heart that nothing is really all right, ever.

World peace, or world domination, and when you got rid of the trick mirrors of rhetoric and bombast, weren’t they really the same thing?

Perhaps that is because you are a white man. White men see monsters everywhere. White men look at their own pricks and see monsters.”

But they were New Yorkers, and the essence of the New York character is to mind your own business and let other people mind theirs.