Desperation

Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.

Oh shit, the mummy's after us, let's all walk a little faster

You said 'God is cruel' the way a person who's lived his whole life on Tahiti might say 'Snow is cold'. You knew, but you didn't understand." He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy's cold cheeks. "Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?

As always at these times when he felt really in need of God the front of his mind was serene, but the deeper part, where faith did constant battle with doubt, was terrified that there would be no answer.

Those who do not learn the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat it.

…When a person stops changing, stops feeling, they die…

You have the right to remain silent,' the big cop said in his robot's voice. 'If you do not choose to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I'm going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?

Oh no, praying is great, without it the thumbscrews and the Iron Maiden probably never would have been invented.

How else could he go on, except with merciful incomprehension held before him like a shield? How could anyone?

In many interviews he had identified himself as a man outraged by death, but that was pretty much the same old big-balls crap he'd been selling throughout his career. He was terrified of death, that was the truth, and as a result of spending his life honing his imagination, he could see it coming from at least four dozen different directions... and late at night when he couldn't sleep, he was apt to see it coming from four dozen different directions at once. Refusing to see the doctor, to have a checkup and let them peek under the hood, would not cause any of those diseases to pause in their approach or their feeding upon him--if, indeed, the feeding had already begun--but if he stayed away from the doctors and their devilish machines, he wouldn't have to know. You didn't have to deal with the monster under the bed or lurking in the corner if you never actually turned on the bedroom lights, that was the thing. And what no doctor in the world seemed to know was that, for men like Johnny Marinville, fearing was sometimes better than finding. Especially when you'd put out the welcome mat for every disease going.

Then he closed his eyes and put his hands together again before his face, finger to finger. Johnny was struck by the kid's lack of pretension. There was a simplicity about the gesture that had been honed by use into beauty.

Why didn't you kill me like you did that guy back there? Billy? Or does it even make any sense to ask? Are you beyond why?' Oh shit, we're all beyond why, you know that.

or to lick along the smooth velvet lining of a woman's mouth with his tongue.

Life is more than just steering a course around pain.

Jail,' the big cop said in his stuffy, liquid voice. 'Where anything you bray will be abused against you in a sort of caw.

So it always has been; so shall it be, life sucks, then you die.

God says, "Sure, take away the safety net. And when that's gone, take away the tight rope too.

All right. Here's the deal, bigshot: suck my cock. Do that and I'll let you go. Straight trade." He unzipped his fly and pulled down the elastic front of his shorts. Something that looked like a dead whitesnake fell out. Johnny observed the thin stream of blood driz-zling from it without surprise. The cop was bleeding from every other orifice, wasn't he? "Speaking in the literature sense," the cop said, grinning, "this particular blowjob is going to be a little more Anne Rice than Armistead Maupin. I suggest you follow Queen Victoria's advice - close your eyes and think of strawberry shortcake.

Everything is better when it shits on a ritz.

Desert lore. Scripture in the wasteland. The resonance of lonely places.

She was wearing a tank-top with torn-off sleeves. It gave an awfully generous view of her breasts for a girl worried about meeting Ted Bundy in a Ryder van.

Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel? Sometimes he makes us live.

Listen to me, David. I’m going to tell you something you didn’t learn from your minister or your Bible. For all I know it’s a message from God himself. Are you listening?” David only looked at him, saying nothing. “You said ‘God is cruel’ the way a person who’s lived his whole life on Tahiti might say ‘Snow is cold.’ You knew, but you didn’t understand.” He stepped close to David and put his palms on the boy’s cold cheeks. “Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel?” David waited, saying nothing. Maybe listening, maybe not. Johnny couldn’t tell. “Sometimes he makes us live.

Uck,” he said, grimacing, and reached into his mouth like a man who’s got a hair on his tongue. Instead of a hair he pulled out the tongue itself. He looked at it for a moment, lying limply in his fist like a piece of liver, and then tossed it aside.

He burst out laughing. She probably wouldn't like it, but he couldn't help it. That was the way laughing was, sort of like farting, sometimes you could hold it in but a lot of times you couldn't.

Hello?” he asked as he went ... just so that anyone intent on killing him would know exactly where to look.