The Dark Tower Quotes

“We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand.”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.”
― Stephen King

“The scariest, most terrifying thing that I fear?"
Yes."
My Imagination."
I thought you were going to say "Fear, itself."
Then you have a small imagination."
Roland and Eddie”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer.
Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.
Death is speechless, so hear my speech.
This is Jake, who served his ka and his tet. Say true.
May the forgiving glance of S’mana heal his heart. Say please.
May the arms of Gan raise him from the darkness of this earth. Say please.
Surround him, Gan , with light.
Fill him, Chloe, with strength.
If he is thirsty, give him water in the clearing.
If he is hungry, give him food in the clearing.
May his life on this earth and the pain of his passing become as a dream to his waking soul, and let his eyes fall upon every lovely sight; let him find the friends that were lost to him, and let every one whose name he calls call his in return.
This is Jake, who lived well, loved his own, and died as ka would have it.
Each man owes a death. This is Jake. Give him peace.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter.

Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone. If torture were to stop now, I might still recover – if never my looks, then at least my strength and my kes.

But other week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top!”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“See the TURTLE, ain't he keen? All things serve the fuckin Beam.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“I don’t like people. They fuck me up”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“Ka is a wheel; its one purpose is to turn. The spin of ka always brings us back to the same place, to face and reface our mistakes and defeats until we can learn from them. When we learn from the past, the wheel continues to move forward, towards growth and evolution. When we don’t, the wheel spins backward, and we are given another chance. If once more we squander the opportunity, the wheel continues its rotation towards devolution, or destruction.”
― Robin Furth, Stephen King's The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance

“All things serve the beam”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“I do not kill with my gun;
He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King

“Ka is a friend to evil as well as good. It embraces both.”
― Stephen King, Black House

“The hands pulled him forward regardless. The hands of the Tower knew no mercy.

They were the hands of Gan, the hands of ka, and they knew no mercy.

He smelled alkali, bitter as tears. The desert beyond the door was white; blinding; waterless; without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon. The smell beneath the alkali was that of the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death.

But not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct.

May I be brutally frank? You go on.

And each time you forget the last time. For you, each time is the first time.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“I deal in lead! Roland called, and Eddie felt goose-bumps pebble his arms.”
― Stephen King, Song of Susannah

“Why must you hurt me, when I love you so? When I can do nothing else nor want to, for love made me and fed me and kept me in better days? Why will you cut me, and disfigure my face, and fill me with woe? I have only loved you for your beauty as you once loved me for mine in the days before the world moved on. Now you scar me with nails and put burning drops of quicksilver in my nose; you have set the animals on me, so you have, and they have eaten of my softest parts. Around me the can-toi gather and there’s no peace from their laughter.

Yet still I love you and would serve you and even bring the magic again, if you would allow me, for that is how my heart was cast when I rose from the Prim. And once I was strong as well as beautiful, but now my strength is almost gone. If torture were to stop now, I might still recover – if never my looks, then at least my strength and my kes.

But another week… or maybe five days… or even three… and it will be too late. Even if the torture stops, I’ll die. And you’ll die too, for when love leaves the world, hearts are still. Tell them of my love and tell them of my pain and tell them of my hope, which still lives. For this is all I have and all I am and all I ask.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“Good luck, good will, good fortune, not ill.”
― Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis

“They would go down fighting, but they were going to die there.

And he thought dying would be all right. It was going to break Roland's heart to lose the boy...yet he would go on. As long as the Dark Tower stood, Roland would go on.

Jake looked up. "She said, 'Remember the struggle.' "

"Susannah did."

"Yes. She came forward. Mia let her. And the song moved Mia. She wept."

"Say true?"

"True. Mia, daughter of none, mother of one. And while Mia was distracted...her eyes blind with tears..."

Jake looked around. Oy looked around with him, likely not searching for anything but only imitating his beloved Ake. Callahan was remembering that night on the Pavilion. The lights. The way Oy had stood on his hind legs and bowed to the folken. Susannah, singing. The lights. The dancing, Roland dancing the commala in the lights, the colored lights. Roland dancing in the white. Always Roland; and in the end, after the others had fallen, murdered away one by one in these bloody motions, Roland would remain.”
― Stephen King, Song of Susannah

“So fell Lord Perth," he said, "and the countryside did shake with that thunder.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“It was the Tower. The Dark Tower. It stood on the horizon of a vast plain the color of blood in the violent setting of a dying sun. He couldn't see the stairs which spiraled up and up and up within its brick shell, but he could see the windows which spiraled up along that staircase’s way, and saw the ghosts of all the people he had ever known pass through them. Up and up they marched, and an arid wind brought him the sound of voices calling his name.”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“If you have given up your heart for the Tower, Roland, you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. To be a beast is perhaps bearable, although the man who has become one will surely pay hell’s own price in the end, but if you should gain your object? What if you should, heartless, storm the Dark Tower and win it? What could you do except degenerate from beast to monster? To gain one’s object as a beast would only be bitterly comic, like giving a magnifying glass to an elephant. But to gain one’s object as a monster…To pay hell is one thing. But do you want to own it?”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“Shake the hand that shook the world.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“This is a place of death, he thought, and not just here. All these rooms. Every floor.

Yes, gunslinger, whispered the Voice of the Tower. But only because your life has made it so.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“He'd sent his cock on its exploring way up more damp and cozy cracks than Jonas had ever seen in his life, and Jonas was twice his age.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Tell me the truth, Roland of Gilead - no flattery. For
flattery's kind only a candle's length.'

Little sisters of Eluria.”
― Stephen King, Everything's Eventual

“Not all is silent in the halls of the dead. Behold, the sleeper wakes.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Time was a face on the water, & like the great river before them, it did nothing but flow.' - The Wind Through The Keyhole.”
― Stephen King, The Wind Through the Keyhole

“A man can't pull himself up by his own bootstraps no matter how hard he tries, Cort had lectured when Roland, Cuthbert, Alain and Jamie had been little more than toddlers.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“King’s voice rose to a rough shout; his hand shot out and gripped Roland’s wrist with amazing strength.
“Finish the job!”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“What made the Badlands bad when you had food and water? Watching the sky turn first gold and then russet in the west; watching it turn purple and then starshot black in the east. She watched the days end with increasing dread: the thought of another endless night, the three of them huddled together while the wind whined and twined its way through the rocks and the stars glared down.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“It was the look the talented wear when, after years of just moving sleepily along from pillar to post, they are finally challenged to do something that will tax their abilities, stretch them to their limits. Perhaps even beyond them.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower