Dark Tower Quotes & Sayings

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

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

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. — Charles Dickens

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

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

Good luck, good will, good fortune, not ill. — Stephen King

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

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

Time is a thief of memory — Stephen King

Where are we?" Ni asked.
"This is my work place and the center of
Universe as well." Simone said.
"Do you mean the tower is in the center of Universe?" Ni asked
"I mean that we are both in space and inside the tower at the same time."
"Why is it so dark here?" Ni asked.
"At the beginning, it is always dark." Simone replied, "Then everything comes into existence little by little.
Even Light is born out of Darkness. — Leora Cika Waldman

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

Like a lot of rural places, southern Illinois is basically a bunch of small towns knit together, a Babel's Tower mix of rednecks, rubes, freaks, tweakers, gun nuts, and aging hippies--real hippies, not the newfangled crunchy kids they're turning out these days--who'd fled into the dark-licked hills sometime during the bloodiest days of a war that wouldn't stop shaping their lives and had never come out. — Jason Miller

They were close to the end of the beginning . . . — Stephen King

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

I am in good company, simply following those in front of me and knowing others are following behind. We are on our way up a narrow staircase. The bannister is a thick rope suggesting safety. The stairs go around and around inside a church tower; or perhaps it is a minaret? The whorls of the staircase grow narrower and narrower, but as there are so many people behind there is no longer any possibility of turning around or even stopping. The pressure from behind foeces me on. The staircase suddenly stops at a garbage chute in the wall. When i open the hatch and squeeze my way through the hole, i find myself on the outside of the tower. The rope has dissappeared. It is totally dark. I cling on to the slippery, icy wall of the tower while vainly trying to find a foothold in the emptiness. — Sven Lindqvist

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 loveliness of the day was enough to knock you down. Swallows rioted above the calm green lid of the lake. Birch trees gleamed like filaments among the dark evergreens. No planes disturbed the sky. I felt dead to it, though I did take a kind of comfort that all of this beauty was out here, persisting like mad, whether you hearkened to it or not. — Wells Tower

Shake the hand that shook the world. — Stephen King

THE LAKE IN youth's spring it was my lot To haunt of the wide earth a spot The which I could not love the less; So lovely was the loneliness Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, And the tall pines that tower'd around. But when the night had thrown her pall Upon that spot - as upon all, And the wind would pass me by In its stilly melody, My infant spirit would awake To the terror of the lone lake. Yet that terror was not fright - But a tremulous delight, And a feeling undefined, Springing from a darken'd mind. Death was in that poison'd wave And in its gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his dark imagining; Whose wildering thought could even make An Eden of that dim lake. — Edgar Allan Poe

Dad-a-dhuck, dad-a-churtle, don't worry, girl, you've got the turtle! — Stephen King

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

We still have your watch.You can have it back tonight.All you need to do is sneak up after dinner, set the tower, and flee the country. Agreed?
Azalea burned with embarrassment as Bramble folded the napkin around the pencil and passed it to Lord Bradford with the rolls. Lord Bradford took it and unfolded it in his lap.His dark eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. Then he folded the napkin and placed it under his plate. Bramble's yellow-green eyes narrowed. — Heather Dixon

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

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

When my first draft of a novel is done, I put it away, warts and all, to mellow. Some period of time later - six months, a year, two years, it doesn't really matter - I can come back to it with a cooler (but still loving) eye, and begin the task of revising. And although each book of the Tower series was revised as a separate entity, I never really looked at the work as a whole until I'd finished Volume Seven, The Dark Tower. When — Stephen King

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

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

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

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

If ka will say so, let it be so. — Stephen King

What a night it was! The jagged masses of heavy dark cloud were rolling at intervals from horizon to horizon, and thin white wreaths covered the stars. Through all the rush of the cloud river the moon swam, breasting the waves and disappearing again in the darkness.
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky. ("Man Size In Marble") — E. Nesbit

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

In this universe there might grow roses which sing. — Stephen King

Roland of Gilead responded as he ever had and ever would when such useless, mystifying questions were raised: 'Ka. — Stephen King

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

Her evil cannot reach us here. Let us burn the ancient tree-mace trees and close off the ancient ways. Tear down the tower, the crown of our barrow, and let us hide ourselves from evil. Let no one leave the mound, and if evil grows, we shall flee farther.
No! Let evil hear the pounding of our feet! Let evil hear our drumming and our chanting songs of war. Let evil fear us! Let evil flee! In any world, may dark things know our names and fear. May their vile skins creep and shiver at every mention of the faeren. Let the night flee before the dawn and darkness crowd into the shadows. We march to war!
- Nudd, the Chestnut King — N.D. Wilson

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

Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy. — Stephen King

Any battle-seasoned general will tell you that, even in a small-scale engagement (as this one was), there always comes a point where coherence breaks down, and the narrative flow, and any real sense of how things are going. These matters are re-created by historians later on. The need to re-create the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why history exists in the first place. — Stephen King

I kill with my heart, motherfucker — 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

And he thought that, had he been wearing his guns, he might well have drawn one and put a bullet in Susan Delgado's cold and whoring little heart. — Stephen King

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

Nerves, he thought, were for people who hadn't entirely made up their minds. — 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

Roland's heart seemed to twist like a rag inside his chest, and there was a moment to wonder how it could possibly go on beating in the face of this. — Stephen King

He walked out of nowhere toward nowhere, a man from another time who, it seemed, had reached a point of pointless ending. — 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

Don't build yourself an ivory tower" the moralists say. But I am an ivory tower by the mere fact that I am. On the crude physical level the body is a frame of (ivory) bones on which the muscles are stretched, crowned by an (ivory) bone pill-box turret housing the brain - shielding it from the blows of 'reality' so that it can get on with its absurd work undisturbed. On the non-physical level my I-ness is an ivory tower of orderly individual views and vistas shielding 'me' from being swallowed up in chaos. Dear moralists: don't they see that life is a constant flight up and down the endless steps of the dark ivory tower seeking to escape from the horrid chaos of real freedom? — Nanamoli Thera

Oh, sweet thy current by town and by tower, The green sunny vale and the dark linden bower; Thy waves as they dimple smile back on the plain, And Rhine, ancient river, thou'rt German again! — Horace Binney Wallace

What heart I have is yours. — Stephen King

The woman who preaches has poison religion. Let the respectable ones go — Stephen King

I wrote 'Time of the Dark' in 1978 and 'The Silent Tower' in 1984, so the thing that sticks out for me is how totally technology has changed. I suppose that's the great peril for real-world crossovers. — Barbara Hambly

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

The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other's company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, With emotion, to the man I used to be. — Barbara W. Tuchman

May you live long, but not in good health. — 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

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

Him's name is Roland, Mama. I dream about him, sometimes. Him's a King, too. — Stephen King

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

I loved you, Jake. — Stephen King

And again the news offered no news: On CNN, a rerun of Larry King interviewing the widowed and the suffering. On CNN2, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a fatherless son. On CNN3, a rerun of Flight 11 flying toward the first tower, in slow motion. On CNN4, a rerun of the tower collapsing, in slow motion, and again the towers fell, again people jumped and died. On CNN5, a rerun of Larry King interviewing a motherless daughter, a daughterless father, interviewing the motherless, fatherless, wifeless, husbandless, childless, shameless
disgusted, Bill pressed POWER and beheaded King, exiled CNN, and the world went dark. They sat relieved in the silence and dark. Not much road traffic now, but somewhere in the distant overhead the honk and flap of southbound geese, instinct bound, in vees for victory. The turkey was still on the table; the sides were still out. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are tired come home. — Pearl Abraham

He appears to be pointing at a massive water tower, all hinkered down overlooking the river.
'That's an old one.' This ancient, dark metal thing. It looks like a shadow of itself.
'Wait for it,' John says.
'For what?'
'It.'
A few minutes later, the sun slips behind the water tower. The effect is like a total solar eclipse, with the water tower blocking the sun.
'Whoa.'
'Thanks. I arranged that myself. — Susane Colasanti

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

Ka is a friend to evil as well as good. It embraces both. — Stephen King

Vidal had his exuberant and stately tower in the most elegant and elevated part of Pedralbes, surrounded by hills, trees, and fairy-tale skies. I would have my sinister tower rising above the oldest, darkest streets of the city, surrounded by the miasmas and the shadows of that necropolis which poets and murderers had once called the Rose of Fire. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If,' Roland said. 'An old teacher of mine used to call it the only word a thousand letters long. — Stephen King

Should you go on, you will surely be disappointed, perhaps even heartbroken. I have one key left on my belt, but all it opens is that final door, the one marked. What's behind it won't improve your love-life, grow hair on your bald spot, or add five years to your natural span (not even five minutes). There is no such thing as a happy ending. I never met a single one to equal "Once upon a time."
Endings are heartless.
Ending is just another word for goodbye. — Stephen King

That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up. — Andrew Sullivan

Ka works and the world moves on. — Stephen King

I'm afraid to go to sleep. I'm afraid my dead friends will come to me, and that seeing them will kill me. — Stephen King

The quickest way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of. — Stephen King

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

How infinite was love, twining in and out of hope and memory like a braid with three strong strands, so much the Bright Tower of every human's life and soul. — Stephen King

His ordeal has stripped away every bit of himself and leaves him feeling completely exposed to his Enemy. He has no way to know when the next full-scale attack will come, only that it will and that he cannot hide or protect himself from it.
Yet even in Frodo's darkness, with the fiery Ring as the only illumination he senses, there is still deep union between him and God. Evil continually forces its way into the hobbit's soul, but God is already there to strengthen him in his struggle to keep the demonic power from overwhelming him completely. As Frodo burns upon the kindled wheel, he becomes a candle set alight by both Light and Dark, a figure 'clothed in flame' (LOTR, 890), as Sam saw by the red light in the Tower chamber. The combination of this torment, God's love for him, and his own love for his world consume him in 'a holy sacrifice, truly pleasing to God' (Rom. 12:1). — Anne Marie Gazzolo

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

In the end, the wind takes everything, doesn't it? And why not? Why other? If the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all. — 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

She lifted her hands and closed them around his head ... and it seemed to Catriana in that moment as if that newborn trialla in her soul began to sing. Of trials endured and trials to come, of doubt and dark and all the deep uncertainties that defined the outer boundaries of mortal life, but with love now present at the base of it all, like light, like the first stone of a rising tower. — Guy Gavriel Kay

The trap had a ghastly perfection — Stephen King

Do you believe in an afterlife?" the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate.
Brown nodded. "I think this is it. — Stephen King

All things serve the beam — 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

I don't like people. They fuck me up. — Stephen King

But the power of destiny is something awesome; neither wealth, nor Ares, nor a tower, nor dark-hulled ships might escape it. — Sophocles

There are seven windows in the Queen's bedroom in the Citadel that is the center of the City that is on the lake island called the Hub in the middle of the world.
Two of the seven windows face the tower stones and are dark; two overlook inner courtyards; two face the complex lanes that wind between the high, blank-faced mansions of the Protectorate; and the seventh, facing the steep Street of the Birdsellers and, beyond, a crack in the ring of the mountains across the lake, is always filled at night with stars. When wind speaks in the mountains, it whispers in this window, and makes the fine brown bed hangings dance. — John Crowley

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

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

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

Over the balustrade I could see the dark trees of Webster Groves and the more distant TV-tower lights that marked the boundaries of my childhood. A night wind coming across the football practice field carried the smell of thawed winter earth, the great sorrowful world-smell of being alive beneath a sky. — Jonathan Franzen

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

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

Control the things you can control . — Samantha Stosur

Hey, nit squat! These are written by norms to scare norms. And do you know what the monsters and demons and rancid spirits are? Us, that's what. You and me. We are the things that come to the norms in nightmares. The thing that lurks in the bell tower and bites out the throats of the choirboys - that's you, Oly. And the thing in the closet that makes the babies scream in the dark before it sucks their last breath - that's me. And the rustling in the brush and the strange piping cries that chill the spine on a deserted road at twilight - that's the twins singing practice scales while they look for berries. — Katherine Dunn

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

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