Stephen King · 264 pages
Rating: (108.2K votes)
“It was like drowning, only from the inside out.”
“The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.”
“The world is a worst case scenario and I'm afraid that all you sense is true”
“The world has teeth and it can bite you with them any time it wants.”
“Shadows were too black, and when a breeze stirred the trees, the shadows changed in a disquieting way.”
“I've got icewater in my veins and I hope you freeze on the first bite. Come on, you busher! Batter-fucking-up!”
“Let it eat her; let it beat her. It could do both. But she would not beat herself.”
“It's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth, Tom had told her.”
“Part of her wanted to run. Never mind how flowing water was bound to take her to people eventually, all that was likely just a crock of Little House of the Prairie shit.”
“She pushed the button and like a miracle her head filled with the sound of Jerry Trupiano’s voice… and more importantly, with the sounds of Fenway Park. She was sitting out here in the darkening, drippy woods, lost and alone, but she could hear thirty thousand people. It was a miracle.”
“You could get used to anything if you had to.”
“She had a bottle of water in her pack—a big one with a squeeze-top—but suddenly all Trisha wanted in the world was to prime the pump in the little hut and get a drink, cold and fresh, from its rusty lip. She would drink and pretend she was Bilbo Baggins, on his way to the Misty Mountains.”
“You could get used to anything if you had to. She knew that now.”
“Изведнъж започна да се дави в изолацията, да се задушава от яркото, потискащо усещане за себе си като живо същество, откъснато от себеподобните си. Беше излязла извън границите, скиташе се извън игралното поле, в пространство, където правилата, с които бе свикнала, вече не важаха.”
“I don’t believe in any actual thinking God that marks the fall of every bird in Australia or every bug in India, a God that records all of our sins in a big golden book and judges us when we die—I don’t want to believe in a God who would deliberately create bad people and then deliberately send them to roast in a hell He created—but I believe there has to be something.”
“Die Welt hatte Zähne, und sie konnte damit zubeißen, wann immer sie wollte. Das wußte sie jetzt.”
“Il mondo aveva i denti e in qualsiasi momento ti poteva morsicare. Questo Trisha McFarland scoprì a nove anni.”
“Außerdem kommst du vielleicht nie in Petes Alter, sagte die beunruhigende innere Stimme. Wie konnte man bloß eine so kalte und beängstigende Stimme in sich haben? Eine solche Verräterin an der eigenen Sache? Vielleicht kommst du nie aus diesem Wald heraus.”
“Ich will dir sagen, woran ich glaube. Ich glaube an das unterschwellig Wahrnehmbare.”
“Sie hockte bei einbrechender Dunkelheit hier draußen im regennassen Wald, hatte sich verlaufen und war allein, aber sie konnte dreißigtausend Menschen hören. Das war ein Wunder.”
“Als sie die linke Tür des Fahrerhauses erreichte, die halb offen in festgerosteten Scharnieren hing und durch deren Fensterrahmen, der einer leeren Augenhöhle glich, sich Ranken schlängelten, zuckte wieder ein Blitz herab und färbte die ganze Welt purpurrot. In seinem grellen Licht sah Trisha jenseits der Straße etwas stehen, etwas mit hängenden Schultern, mit schwarzen Augen und großen aufgestellten Ohren, die wie Hörner aussahen.”
“Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.”
“Achilles was looking at me. “Your hair never quite lies flat, here.” He touched my head, just behind my ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how I like it.”
My scalp prickled where his fingers had been. “You haven’t,” I said.
“I should have.” His hand drifted down to the vee at the base of my throat, drew softly across the pulse. “What about this? Have I told you what I think of this, just here?”
“No,” I said.
“This surely then.” His hand moved across the muscles of my chest; my skin warmed beneath it. “Have I told you of this?”
“That you have told me.” My breath caught a little as I spoke.
“And what of this?” His hand lingered over my hips, drew down the line of my thigh. “Have I spoken of it?”
“You have.”
“And this? Surely I would not have forgotten this.” His cat’s smile. “Tell me I did not.”
“You did not.”
“There is this too.” His hand was ceaseless now. “I know I have told you of this.”
I closed my eyes. “Tell me again,” I said.”
“to not act is a choice too ”
“How fast the ears learned to tell what sounds meant, much faster than it took the eyes to decipher written words.”
“The Saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor than was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe or outside, lost.”
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