Needful Things

by Stephen King

Trouble and aggravation’s mostly made up of ordinary things, did you ever notice that?

she intended to change Sally Ratcliffe, which was lovely, to Sally Pratt, which sounded to Brian like a fat lady falling down a short hard flight of stairs.

So Brian carefully re-folded his daydream along its creases, as a man will carefully fold a well-read and much-valued document, and tucked it on the shelf at the back of his mind where it belonged.

Polly was a practical woman who knew her own mind and generally liked what she found there, and so the instant of confusion which struck her when she first met this stranger’s eyes was confusing in and of itself.

The lady’s face had all the charm of a snowshovel.

At fifty-one you had to keep running just to escape the avalanche of your own past.

The world is full of needy people who don’t understand that everything, everything, is for sale . . . if you’re willing to pay the price.

Brian had uncovered one of the great truths of small towns: many secrets—in fact, all the really important secrets—cannot be shared. Because word has a way of getting around, and getting around fast.

She decided she did not have to tell Mr. Gaunt this. He looked like the sort of man who might already know.

“I see a narrow piece of shit packaged to look like beef jerky.”

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

Al is pulling away. From me, from his old buddies like Jimmy Catlin, from The Rock itself. Pulling away, that’s all. Like a rocket when the third-stage booster kicks in. Kids always do it, and I guess it’s always kind of a sad surprise to their parents.”

the vicious hypocrisy of the times, which proclaimed the triumph of free love while simultaneously branding unmarried women with babies as creatures beyond the pale of normal society;

In one of those grotesque coincidences which no decent novelist would dare invent, the interral of the husband had taken place just one day before

the wife died.

“Arthritis, yes, terrible, such a shame, shit happens, life’s a bitch and then you die, tough titty said the kitty. I know, Nettie.”

Outside, thousands of miles away, she heard more sirens. They sounded like troubled spirits.

he could not have hurt her more if he had caressed her cheek with a handful of razor-blades.

Another inflexible rule of life—When you really need to get drunk, you can never afford to do it.

he knew that some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour—until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

There was a shadow over her—not one that was completely black, mind you; it was just thick enough to make her hard to see. That’s what makes our grief so fragile.

Because in America, you could have anything you wanted, just as long as you could pay for it. If you couldn’t pay, or refused to pay, you would remain needful forever.

Indeed I do! Selfish people are happy people. I believe that with all my heart.

He had sold his wares from the back of the wagon . . . and was gone before his customers, who paid with small, ragged coins or even in barter, could discover what they had really bought.

Henry Payton walked into the dispatcher’s office feeling more and more like a kid riding a bike with no brakes down a steep hill with a drop-off on one side, a rock wall on the other, and a pack of hungry wolves with reporters’ faces behind him.

But a deeper voice, perhaps the fading voice of sanity, whispered that this was not true. This is how it was from the very start, the voice whispered. You just didn’t see it.

A stench that strong would kill you . . . but first your eyeballs would pop and your hair would fall out and your asshole would seal itself shut in outraged horror.

Everyone loves something for nothing . . . even if it costs everything.

Because he’s not a man at all. Because the devil’s voice is sweet to hear.

The firelight had put roses on his cheeks and embers in his eyes.

The entrance hole was the size of a headbolt. Ace didn’t have to roll him over to know the exit hole would be the size of a coffee cup, probably with chunks of old Dad’s spine sticking out of it like bloody candy-canes.

Needful Things was the place where everything had started; Needful Things was where it all must end.

Suddenly she was furious with him—furious at all of them, all the greedy, frightened, angry, acquisitive people in this town, herself included.

Just a little spider. But it grew. It ate my pain and it grew. This is what it did before I killed it and took my pain back. I wanted so badly for the pain to be gone, Alan. That was what I wanted, but I don’t need it to be gone. I can love you and I can love life and bear the pain all at the same time. I think the pain might even make the rest better, the way a good setting can make a diamond look better.”

Alan felt sanity begin to fill him again. It was funny stuff, sanity. When it was taken away, you didn’t know it. You didn’t feel its departure. You only really knew it when it was restored, like some rare wild bird which lived and sang within you not by decree but by choice.