“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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“It hurts to look at the clouds, but it also helps, like most things that cause pain.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from The Silver Linings Playbook
“Most of all, it was the wild music that impressed Matt. It did the same thing that playing the piano had done when he was frightened and lonely. It took him into another world where only beauty existed and where he was sage from hatred and disappointment and death.”
― Nancy Farmer, quote from The House of the Scorpion
“course. For in some blind, dualistic way both she and Asa insisted, as do all religionists, in disassociating God from harm and error and misery, while granting Him nevertheless supreme control. They would seek for something else—some malign, treacherous, deceiving power which, in the face of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, still beguiles and betrays—and find it eventually in the error and perverseness of the human heart, which God has made, yet which He does not control, because He does not want to control it.”
― Theodore Dreiser, quote from An American Tragedy
“We had just commenced the third course—the bread and jam—when a gentleman in shirt-sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn’t given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, quote from Three Men in a Boat
“Like I'm always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different.”
― Rebecca Skloot, quote from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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