The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, #7)
Highlights
Roland had taught him that self-deception was nothing but pride in disguise, an indulgence to be denied.
Good point. Why do we lie to ourselves?
Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts’ deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?
So much you did and so much more you would have done, aye, and all without a check or qualm, and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love’s ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.
“Because talent won’t be quiet, doesn’t know how to be quiet,” he said. “Whether it’s a talent for safe-cracking, thought-reading, or dividing tend-digit numbers in your head, it screams to be used. It never shuts up. It’ll wake you in the middle of your tiredest night, screaming, ‘Use me, use me, use me! I’m tired of just sitting here! Use me, fuckhead, use me!’”
“A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.”
Nerves, he thought, were for people who still hadn’t entirely made up their minds.
…never’s the word God listens for when he needs a laugh.
He had already noticed that this world was full of clocks, as if the people who lived here thought that by having so many they could cage time.
Time was a thief, and one of the first things it took was your sense of humor.
…a point came where one had to trust, because the alternative was madness.
…there’s just one rule with no exceptions: before victory comes temptation. And the greater the victory to win, the greater the temptation to withstand.
A feeling of vast contentment filled her. Some of it was having eaten hot food, but by no means all. The greater part of her well-being stemmed from a day of hard work, no more or less than that. The sense that they were not just floating along but doing for themselves.
It was a look of hot excitement. 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.
And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.
I’ve told my tale all the way to the end, and am satisfied. It was (I set my watch and warrant on it) the kind only a good God would save for last, full of monsters and marvels and voyaging here and there. I can stop now, put my pen down, and rest my weary hand (although perhaps not forever; the hand that tells the tales has a mind of its own, and a way of growing restless). I can close my eyes to Mid-World and all that lies beyond Mid-World. Yet some of you who have provided the ears without which no tale can survive a single day are likely not so willing. You are the grim, goal-oriented ones who will not believe that they joy is in the journey rather than the destination no matter how many times it has been proven to you. You are the unfortunate ones who still get the lovemaking all confused with the paltry squirt that comes to end the lovemaking (the orgasm is, after all, God’s way of telling us we’ve finished, at least for the time being, and should go to sleep). You are the cruel ones who deny the Grey Havens, where tired characters go to rest. You say you want to know how it all comes out. You say you want to follow Roland into the Tower; you say that is what you paid your money for, the show you came to see. I hope most of you know better. Want better. I hope you came to hear the tale, and not just munch your way through the pages to the ending. For an ending, you only have to turn to the last page and see what is there writ upon. But endings are heartless. An ending is a closed door no man (or Manni) can open. I’ve written many, but most only for the same reason that I pull on my pants in the morning before leaving the bedroom—because it is the custom of the country.
Endings are heartless. Ending is just another word for goodbye.