'Salem's Lot

by Stephen King

But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.

God grant me the SERENITY to accept what I cannot change, the TENACITY to change what I may, and the GOOD LUCK not to fuck up too often.

Never listen at a knothole lest you be vexed. That meant, his father said, that you may hear something about yourself that you don’t like.

“Still waters run deep,

The child is the father of the man, maybe. Or as the twig is bent the tree is shaped.

Let the machinery take over.