“But he had never seen Myrna in practice...never that close up. He had been impressed and a little frightened by the contrast between seeing ballet on stange, where everyone seemed to either glide or mince effortlessly on the tips of their pointes. and seeing it from less than five feet away, with harsh daylight pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows and no music- only the choreographer rythmically clapping his hands and yelling harsh criticisms. No praise, only criticisms. Their faces ran with sweat. Their leotards were wet with sweat. The room, as large and airy as it way, stank of sweat. Sleek muscles trembled and fluttered on the nervous edge of exhaustion. Corded tendons stood out like insulated cables. Throbbing veins popped out on foreheads and necks. Except for the choreographer's clapping and angry, hectoring shouts, the only sounds were the thrup-thud of ballet dancers on pointe moving across the floor and harsh, agonized panting for breath. Jack had suddenly realized that these dancers were not just earning a living, they were killing themselves. Most of all he remembered their expressions- all that exhausted concentration, all that pain... but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“He began to cry, not hysterically or screaming as people cry when concealed rage with tears, but with continuous sobs who has just discovered that he's alone and will be for long. He cried because safety and reason seemed to have left the world. Loneliness was a reality, but in this situation madness was also remotely a possibility.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“Everything goes away, Jack Sawyer, like the moon. Everything comes back, like the moon.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“You don’t own a thing unless you can give it up, what does it profit a man, it profits him nothing, it profits him zilch, and you don’t learn that in school, you learn it on the road, you learn it from Ferd Janklow, and Wolf, and Richard going head-first into the rocks like a Titan II that didn’t fire off right.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“As his mouth flooded with that horrible sweet purple taste, he could actually see those grapes dull, dusty, obese and nasty, crawling up a dirty stucco wall in a thick, syrupy sunlight that was silent except for the stupid buzz of many flies”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“From outside came a sudden and loud music of birds celebrating their existence.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“Ah, it’s a real pit. Sort of place where they eat what they run over on the road. Gorillaville. You eat the beer, then you drink”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“...he never forgot that sweet, violent feeling of having touched some great adventure, of having looked for a moment at some beautiful white light that was, in fact, every color of the rainbow.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“Looking back on it, Sloat wasn't sure how he had tolerated Phil Sawyer for as long as he had. His partner had never played to win, not seriously; he had been encumbered by sentimental notions of loyalty and honor, corrupted by the stuff you told kids to get them halfway civilized before you finally tore the blindfold off their eyes.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“When he remembered to turn and look for it, the Talisman was gone.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“Myrna was part of a ballet troupe and Jack had seen her and the other dancers perform—his mother often made him go with her and it was mostly boring stuff, like church or Sunrise Semester on TV. But he had never seen Myrna in practice . . . never that close up. He had been impressed and a little frightened by the contrast between seeing ballet on stage, where everyone seemed to either glide or mince effortlessly on the tips of their pointes, and seeing it from less than five feet away, with harsh daylight pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows and no music—only the choreographer rhythmically clapping his hands and yelling harsh criticisms. No praise; only criticisms. Their faces ran with sweat. Their leotards were wet with sweat. The room, as large and airy as it was, stank of sweat. Sleek muscles trembled and fluttered on the nervous edge of exhaustion. Corded tendons stood out like insulated cables. Throbbing veins popped out on foreheads and necks. Except for the choreographer’s clapping and angry, hectoring shouts, the only sounds were the thrup-thud of ballet dancers on pointe moving across the floor and harsh, agonized panting for breath. Jack had suddenly realized that these dancers were not just earning a living; they were killing themselves. Most of all he remembered their expressions—all that exhausted concentration, all that pain . . . but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it had scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable. What kind of person could get off by subjecting himself or herself to such steady, throbbing, excruciating pain?”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“All that profligate investment of energy to effect a splendid, momentary reversal of natural law. That such a reversal should demand so much and last such a short time was terrible; that people would go for it anyway was both terrible and wonderful.
...A game, or maybe even not that--maybe it was only practice for a game, the way that all the sweat and trembling exhaustion in the Wilshire loft that day had just been practice. Practice for a show that only a few people would probably care to attend and which would probably close quickly.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“He could not say goodbye to these three rooms as he could to a house he had loved: hotel rooms accepted departures emotionlessly.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“Joy—damn, but that’s a cheerful little word.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“Empezó a llorar, no histéricamente o a gritos, como llora la gente cuando disimula la rabia con lágrimas, sino con los sollozos continuos de quien acaba de descubrir que está solo y lo estará durante mucho tiempo. Lloró porque la seguridad y la razón parecían haber abandonado el mundo. La soledad era esto, una realidad, pero en esta situación la locura era asimismo una posibilidad nada remota.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“The door banged open, letting in a raucous flood of the Oak Ridge Boys.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“The diligence took another terrific bounce.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“[He] let himself be taken by the sunset - it seemed oddly premonitory, a dream of accomplishment, and led him into memories of all he had undergone...”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
“I can bear to tell you no more— only that they comforted each other as
well as they could, and, as you probably know from your own bitter
experience, that is never quite good enough.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Talisman
Stephen King
Born place: in Portland, Maine, The United States
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“You said, 'I love you.' Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Written on the Body
“My fore-parts, as you so ineloquently put it, have names.”
I pointed to my right breast. “This is Danger.” Then my left. “And this is Will Robinson. I would appreciate it if you addressed them accordingly.”
After a long pause in which he took the time to blink several times, he asked, “You named your breasts?”
I turned my back to him with a shrug. “I named my ovaries, too, but they don’t get out as much.”
― Darynda Jones, quote from First Grave on the Right
“There's something hypnotic about the word tea.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, quote from Gaudy Night
“London es, antes que nada, una novela. Todas las familias cuya suerte sigue esta historia, desde los Ducket hasta la familia de Penny, son ficticias, al igual que el papel que cada uno de ellos desempeña en los hechos históricos que se describen. Al seguir la historia de estas familias imaginarias a lo largo de los siglos, he”
― Edward Rutherfurd, quote from London
“It's God's nature to come on in the bottom of the ninth, Tom had told her.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
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