Dark Tower Quotes

Are you a gunslinger, Roland? If you are, you better get ready. ~ Stephen King

Certainly she had little experience of the world (Aunt Cord reminded her of this almost daily), but She had an idea that people who set on by saying Let me be honest with you were apt to go on by telling you straight-faced that rain fell up, money grew on trees, and babies were brought by the Grand Featherex. ~ Stephen King

Shake the hand that shook the world. ~ Stephen King

But that will leave no place for us!' cried Pippin in dismay. 'We don't want to be left behind. We want to go with Frodo.' 'That is because you do not understand and cannot imagine what lies ahead,' said Elrond. 'Neither does Frodo,' said Gandalf, unexpectedly supporting Pippin. "Nor do any of us see clearly. It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom. Even if you chose for us an elf-lord, such as Glorfindel, he could not storm the Dark Tower, nor open the road to the Fire by the power that is in him. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.
I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.
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

This is dying - I know because I've done it before. ~ Stephen King

If you're going to suggest I try dropping twenty feet down a pitch dark tower in the hope of hitting a couple of greasy little steps which might not even still be there, you can forget it," said Rincewind sharply.

"There is an alternative, then."

"Out with it, man."

"You could drop five hundred feet down a pitch black tower and hit stones which certainly are there," said Twoflower. ~ Terry Pratchett

What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. ~ Stephen King

Any statement beginning with the words 'In truth' is almost always a lie. ~ Stephen King

If you have given up your heart ... you have already lost. A heartless creature is a loveless creature, and a loveless creature is a beast. ~ Stephen King

As for the end of the universe ... I say let it come as it will, in ice, fire, or darkness. What did the universe ever do for me that I should mind its welfare? ~ Stephen King

I love my sons and I love that they are writers - I also love my daughter, who's a minister and an orchard keeper! - but I wouldn't wish the burden of Mid-World and the Dark Tower on them. I enjoy working with them, though, because we fit together. ~ Stephen King

See you later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. ~ Bill Haley

But I still think that's a pretty fine age. Maybe the best age. You can rock and roll all night, but when the music dies out and the beer wears off, you're able to think. And dream big dreams. The mean Patrol Boy cuts you down to size eventually, and if you start out small, why, there's almost nothing left but the cuffs of your pants when he's done with you. ~ Stephen King

The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. Tin tan din dan bim bam bom bo--tan tin din dan bam bim bo bom--tan dan tin bam din bo bim bom--every bell in her place striking tuneably, hunting up, hunting down, dodging, snapping, laying her blows behind, making her thirds and fourths, working down to lead the dance again. Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells--little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Their situation was becoming ever harder to deny: they were characters in someone's story. This whole world
~ Stephen King

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

The terror ran endlessly on in his mind, making him feel like a rat trapped on an exercise wheel. And when he tried to look ahead to some better, brighter time, he could see only darkness. ~ Stephen King

He wanted her, suddenly and completely, with a desperate depth of feeling that felt like sickness. Everything he was and everything he had come for, it seemed, was secondary to her. ~ Stephen King

The King is in his Tower, eating bread and honey. The Breakers in the basement, making all the money. ~ Stephen King

May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top! ~ Stephen King

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. ~ Stephen King

It starts here. From its field of roses, the Dark Tower cries out in its beast's voice. Time is a face on the water. ~ Stephen King

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 Tower trembles; the worlds shudder in their courses. The rose feels a chill, as of winter. ~ Stephen King

Oy?" he asked. "Will you say goodbye?"
Oy looked at Roland, and for a moment the gunslinger wasn't sure he understood. Then the bumbler extended his neck and caressed the boy's cheek a last time with his tongue. "I, Ake," he said: Bye, Jake or I ache, it came to the same. ~ Stephen King

If he came upon us burning in the street, I don't think he'd piss on us to put us out. ~ Stephen King

Battles that last five minutes spawn legends that live a thousand years. ~ Stephen King

The dark tower. Childe Roland to the dark tower came. ~ Harper Lee

This situation is not quite beyond saving, but should you carry on much further - should you give voice to such thoughts - it will be. ~ Stephen King

Worlds which had trembled for a moment in their orbits now steadied, and in one of those worlds, in a desert that was the apotheosis of all deserts, a man named Roland turned over in his bedroll and slept easily once again beneath the alien constellations. ~ Stephen King

A coward judges all he sees by what he is. ~ Stephen King

All of Mid-World had become one vast haunted mansion in these strange latter days; all of Mid-World had become The Drawers; all of Mid-World had become a waste land, haunting and haunted. ~ Stephen King

Time is a thief of memory ~ Stephen King

No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves. ~ Stephen King

A large praying mantis was performing ablutions on the springy stem of the kid's cowlick. The gunslinger snorted laughter-the first in gods knew how long-and set the fire and went after water. ~ Stephen King

The gunslinger said, "I used to think the most terrible thing would be to reach the Dark Tower and find the top room empty. The God of all universes either dead or nonexistent in the first place. But now ... suppose there is someone there, Eddie? Someone in charge who turns out to be ... " He couldn't finish.
Eddie could. "Someone who turns out to be just another bumhug? Is that it? God not dead but feeble-minded and malicious? ~ Stephen King

If you love me, then love me. ~ Stephen King

They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food. ~ Stephen King

God pisses down the back of your neck every day, but only drowns you once. ~ Stephen King

So fell Lord Perth," he said, "and the countryside did shake with that thunder. ~ Stephen King

I fell in love with you, he said. That's why I said it. It happened even before you kissed me, I think. ~ Stephen King

Liars see their own kind everywhere. ~ Stephen King

Time and ka and trains. I'm thinking about them and many other things.
(Lady of Shadows: Dark Tower, The Drawing of the Three) ~ Stephen King

May you live long, but not in good health. ~ Stephen King

The Tower. He would come to the Dark Tower and there he would sing their names; there he would sing their names; there he would sing all their names. The sun stained the east a dusky rose, and at last Roland, no longer the last gunslinger but one of the last three, slept and dreamed his angry dreams through which there ran only that one soothing blue thread: There I will sing all their names! ~ Stephen King

The gunslinger waited for the time of the drawing and dreamed his long dreams of the Dark Tower, to which he would some day come at dusk and approach, winding his horn, to do some unimaginable final battle. ~ Stephen King

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

I loved you, Jake. ~ Stephen King

Listen to me, maggots. Listen for your lives, for that's what it could mean some day. You never see all that you see. One of the things they send you to me for is to show you what you don't see in what you see
what you don't see when you're scared, or fighting or running or fucking. No man sees al that he sees, but before you're gunslinger
those of you who don't go west, that is,
you'll see more in one single glance than some men see in a lifetime. And some of what you don't see in that glance you'll see afterwards, in the eye of your memory
if you live long enough to remember, that is. Because the difference between seeing and not seeing can be the difference between the living and dying. ~ Stephen King

Shall there be truth between us, as two men? Not as friends, but as enemies and equals? ~ Stephen King

See the TURTLE, ain't he keen? All things serve the fuckin Beam. ~ Stephen King

See the turtle of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth. If you want to run and play, come along the beam today. ~ Stephen King

The 'lady' looks as if she'd be happy to fuck a rope, could she make it stand up between her thighs. ~ Stephen King

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

It's the world's smallest violin, playing 'My Heart Pumps Purple Piss for You'. ~ Stephen King

It's the grapefruit. By which I mean its the pink one.
-Steven Deschain
Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower #4) ~ Stephen King

He grasped the knob. It was engraved with a wild rose
wound around a revolver, one of those great old guns from his
father and now lost forever.
Yet it will be yours again, whispered the voice of the Tower
and the voice of the roses - these voices were now one.
What do you mean ?
To this there was no answer, but the knob turned beneath
his hand, and perhaps that was an answer. Roland opened the
door at the top of the Dark Tower.
He saw and understood at once, the knowledge falling
upon him in a hammerblow, hot as the sun of the desert that
was the apotheosis of all deserts. How many times had he
climbed these stairs only to find himself peeled back, curved
back, turned back? Not to the beginning (when things might
have been changed and time's curse lifted), but to that moment
in the Mohaine Desert when he had finally understood that his
thoughtless, questionless quest would ultimately succeed? How
many times had he traveled a loop like the one in the clip
that had once pinched off his navel, his own tet-ka can Gan?
How many times would he travel it?
"Oh, no!" he screamed. "Please, not again! Have pity! Have
mercy!"
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. ~ Stephen King

There will be water if God wills it. ~ Stephen King

We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand. ~ Stephen King

The man in black fled across the dessert and the gunslinger followed. ~ Stephen King

Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor, for the Realm of Sauron is ended for ever, and the Dark Tower is thrown down. Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard, for your watch hath not been in vain, and the Black Gate is broken, and your King hath passed through, and he is victorious. Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West, for your King shall come again, and he shall dwell among you all the days of your life. And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the City shall be blessed. Sing all ye people! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

He looked so strange without his guns.
So wrong.
'Okay? Now that the numb-fuck apprentices have the guns and the master's unarmed, can we please go? If something big comes out of the bush at us, Roland, you can always throw your knife at it.'
'Oh, that,' he murmured. 'I almost forgot.' He took the knife from his purse and held it out, hilt first, to Eddie.
'This is ridiculous!' Eddie shouted.
'Life is ridiculous.'
'Yeah, put it on a postcard and send it to the fucking Reader's Digest.' Eddie jammed the knife into his belt and then looked defiantly at Roland. 'Now can we go?'
'There is one more thing,' Roland said.
'Weeping, creeping Jesus!'
The smile touched Roland's mouth again. 'Just joking,' he said.
Eddie's mouth dropped open. Beside him, Susannah began to laugh again. The sound rose, as musical as bells, in the morning stillness. ~ Stephen King

Of course it's heavier, he thought. It's got my grief in it. I pull it along with me everywhere I go, so I do. ~ Stephen King

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright. ~ Stephen King

What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Everything in the Universe denies 'nothing'. To suggest an ending is the one absurdity -The Man in Black from Stephen King's The Gunslinger ~ Stephen King

Let evil wait for the day on which it must fall. ~ Stephen King

Few if any seemed to have grasped the Principle of Reality; new knowledge leads always to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search. ~ Stephen King

A person's never too old for stories. Man and boy, girl and woman, we live for them. - Roland Deschain ~ Stephen King

This is going to sound strange, but I really didn't think I would pass 30. I don't know why or whatever, I just didn't. That's a very weird thing to say, I'm sorry. I don't know. Maybe it's because I was drinking so much as a youth. ~ Kristin Davis

At the end of her life she was aware of heat but not pain. She had time to consider his eyes, eyes of that blue which is the color of the sky at first light of the morning. She had time to think of him on the Drop, riding Rusher flat out with his black hair flying back from his temples and his neckerchief rippling; to see him laughing with an ease and freedom he would never find again in the long life which stretched out for him beyond hers, and it was his laughter she took with her as she went out, fleeing the light and heat in to the silkly, consoling dark, calling to him over and over as she went, calling bird and bear and hare and fish. ~ Stephen King

It's not supposed to end this way. Whatever else Roland and his ka-tet knows, that's one thing that they ken for sure. This business ain't supposed to end, and end bloody, at the base of some godforsaken pile of rock called Jericho Hill. Because John Farson is evil, and they're good, and good may have its setbacks and bumps along the road, but when the final bell gongs, only good is left to hear its peals. They know that. They just…they know it. This ain't how it's gonna end. 'Cept, deep down…they know it is. ~ Stephen King

You can rank me to the dogs and back, but I'll never lose the hard-on I use to fuck your mother. ~ Stephen King

The folks who end up living the lives they expected are more often than not the ones who end up takin sleepin pills or stickin the barrel of a gun in their mouths qnd pullin the trigger. ~ Stephen King

You haven't finished the key, but not because you are afraid to finish. You're afraid of finding you can't finish. You're afraid to go down to where the stones stand, but not because you're afraid of what may come once you enter the circle. You're afraid of what may not come. You're not afraid of the great world, Eddie, but of the small one inside yourself. ~ Stephen King

All things serve the beam ~ Stephen King

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

Ka was a wheel; it was also a net from which none ever escaped. ~ Stephen King

I am Roland of Gilead. And you . . . you are nothing. ~ Robin Furth, Peter David

You'll live in exile and die as you lived. ~ Stephen King

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

What if I fall?', Tim cried.
Maerlyn laughed. 'Sooner or later, we all do. ~ Stephen King

In the end, all things, even the Beams, serve the Dark Tower. Did you think you would be any different? ~ Stephen King

You're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The most clear-sided view of the darkest
possible situation is itself an act of optimism ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Maddow's Dark Warning About America And Iraq ~ Anonymous

In my real life I live in the countryside, I walk a lot, I shoot clay pigeons, I don't get involved in the film business or anything, and then in my cinematic life, I think I am drawn to the dark side. ~ Nick Love

A flame in the dark ~ Richelle Mead

A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack. ~ Frank Oz

But where should he begin? - Well, then, the trouble with the English was their:

Their:

In a word, Gibreel solemnly pronounced, their weather.

Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. 'When the day is not warmer than the night,' he reasoned, 'when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything - from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs - as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What folly! For truth is extreme, it is so and not thus, it is him and not her; a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, heated. City,' he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, 'I am going to tropicalize you.'

Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral definition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). Improved street-life, outrageously coloured flowers (magenta, vermilion, neon-green), spider-monkeys in the oaks. A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling ~ Salman Rushdie

The dark and the light, they exist side by side,
Sometimes overlapping, one explaining the other.
The darkened path is as illuminated as the lightened,
Only the fear of the dark keeps us from seeing our way. ~ Raven Davies

Once upon a time, a savage, violent time, humans, goblins, kobolds, Hödekin, and Lorelei lived side by side in the world above, feeding, fighting, preying, slaying. It was, as I had said, a dark time, and Man turned to dark practices to keep the blood tides at bay. Sacrifices, you see. Man turned against brother, fathers against daughters, sons against
mothers, all to appease the goblins. To stop the needless deaths, one man - one stupid, foolish man - made a bargain with the old laws of the land, offering himself as a sacrifice. ~ S. Jae-Jones

Down below the broad, roaring waves of the sea break against the deep foundation of the rock. But high above the mountain, the sea, and the peaks of rock the eternal ornamentation blooms silently from the dark depths of the universe. ~ Rudolf Otto

Tell them this: somehow our two worlds stand linked again by some dark power of Tsurani origin. It moves against the Kingdom. It is power beyond human understanding, perhaps power to challenge the gods themselves. ~ Raymond E. Feist

Sophie and Agatha locked eyes one last time but neither screamed for the other.
Once true loves, the two girls now pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with
Good, Evil with Evil ...
Both of their wishes granted. ~ Soman Chainani

In the life of every man there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. At once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeeds the storm. The causes which produce these changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

He fingered her nape, massaging his sensual intent. I'll give you whatever you want whenever you want it. Any time of day, you need relief, just crook your finger and I'll crook mine. Against you, inside you, deep as you need it. If I'm not around, text me and I'll come, ready to make you come. For one week, I'll fulfill every fantasy on demand and get you off so many times we'll break records. ~ Kate Meader

The first arrow struck Semian in the leg, just above the knee. Semian howled, staggered and fell back into the water. The second arrow struck one of the other riders in the back. The third arrow hit the wounded dragon in the neck, which only made it hiss and snap. Kemir didn't stop to fire a fourth; instead he jogged a little deeper into the forest and then turned and followed the path of the river. The knights wouldn't follow him into the trees, he was quite sure of that, and the dragons would never find him in the dark. Not killing Rider Semian, he discovered, was immensely satisfying. Killing him was something he could do only once. He smiled to himself. ~ Stephen Deas

I don't really know what 'a dark place' means. I have windows in my house, and I'm generally an upbeat person! A lot of people throw that word at me because I wear a lot of black and leather. ~ Natalia Kills

You have shoes to match."
"I do?"
"You do, yes, and go with diamonds. Leave the color to the dress."
"Which diamonds? Do you know how many you give me? Why do you do that?"
The aggrieved sound of her voice amused him nearly as much as giving her diamonds. "It's a sickness. I'll get them for you once you're dressed."
She said nothing, and stood where she was as he selected a dark suit from his forest of suits, a slate-colored shirt, and a stone-colored tie.
"How come you don't wear color?"
"The better to serve as the backdrop for my beautiful wife."
She narrowed her eyes. "You had that one ready."
"The truth is always ready."
She jabbed a finger at him. "That one, too."
"Such a cynic. ~ J.D. Robb