Writing turns you into somebody who’s always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on.
Never in his life had occasion to ask himself, “Why are things the way they are?” Why should he bother, when the way they were was always perfect? Why are things the way they are? The question to which there is no answer, and up till then he was so blessed he didn’t even know the question existed.
There are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books.
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach – that it makes no sense. And when that happens the happiness is never spontaneous again. It is artificial and, even then, bought at the price of an obstinate estrangement from oneself and one’s history.
The ending is immense. Tell it plainly”.
Many farcical, illogical, incomprehensible transactions are subsumed by the mania of lust.
In school we chanted, along with our teacher, I am the Captain of my fate, I am the Master of my soul, and meanwhile, within my own body, an anarchic insurrection had been launched by one of my privates- which I was helpless to put down!
There was always something about our family, and I don’t mean color – there was something about us that impeded you. You think like a prisoner. You do, Coleman Brutus. You’re white as snow and you think like a slave.
You’ve got a good girl this time. Don’t screw it up. Don’t let her go.
He was struck by how lives diverge and by how powerless each of us is up against the force of circumstance. And where does God figure in this?
You don’t have to work in a mental hospital to know about husbands and wives.
Nothing keeps its promise.
America?” said Gamesh, smiling. “Roland, what’s American to you? Or me, or those tens of thousands up in the the stands? It’s just a word they use to keep your nose to the grindstone and your toes to the line. America is the opiate of the people.
The tragedy of the man not set up for tragedy – that is every man’s tragedy.
If he had another brother he would call him. But for a brother he has only Jerry and Jerry has only him. For a daughter he has only Merry. For a father she has only him. There is no way around any of this.
If he were around this place as a professor, he could teach ‘Appropriate Behavior in Classical Greek Drama,’ a course that would be over before it began.
Waarom zou ik behoefte hebben aan een monument in mijn naam terwijl er op straat zo’n feestbanket rondloopt?
But the danger with hatred is, once you start in on it, you get a hundred times more than you bargained for. Once you start, you can’t stop. I don’t know anything harder to control than hating. Easier to kick drinking than to master hate. And that is saying something.
You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.
When the whole world doesn’t believe in God, it’ll be a great place.