Needful Things

I'm having a magenta day. Not just red, but magenta!

Everyone loves something for nothing...even if it costs everything.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?She had shaken her head slowly.Men and women who can't get over their past . . . That's what ghosts are.

Love, the simplest, strongest, and most unforgiving of all emotions.

Why is it that so many people think all the answers are in their wallet?

Some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour- until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

Put an egg in your shoe and beat it, make like a tree and leave, imitate an amoeba and split.

That was what I wanted, but I don't need it to be gone. I can love you and I can love life and bear the pain all at the same time. I think the pain might even make the rest better, the way a good setting can make a diamond look better.

What chance?’ she had asked, bewildered.‘Your chance. Your chance to live your own life. Right now you have the look of a woman who is seeing ghosts. Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?’She had shaken her head slowly.‘Men and women who can’t get over the past,’ Aunt Evvie said. ‘That’s what ghosts are. Not them.’ She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. ‘The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay.

Because in America, you could have anything you wanted, just as long as you could pay for it. If you couldn't pay, or refused to pay, you would remain needful for ever.

Life could sometimes be grand.

You must be human . . . how weirdly exotic and excitingly perverse.

It was funny stuff, sanity. When it was taken away, you didn’t know it. You didn’t feel its departure. You only really knew it when it was restored, like some rare wild bird which lived and sang within you not by decree but by choice.

In a democracy we sometimes have to put up with things we don't life or approve of.

It was wrong, but sometimes you have to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette.

Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please! Come in close where everyone can see! I got a tale to tell, it isn’t gonna cost a dime! (And if you believe that, we’re gonna get along just fine.)

Hugh stretched out one hand and stroked the fur. It felt cold and rich, it crackled with silky static electricity. Stroking it was like stroking a clear autumn night.

Not everyone believes in ghost’s, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?“ She had shaken her head slowly. "Men and women who can’t get over the past,” Aunt Evie said. “That’s what ghost’s are. Not them.” She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. “The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay.

real reason he’d gone was the one most bad decisions have in common: it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sure. Sure you have. I never forget a face.

At fifty-one you had to keep running just to escape the avalanche of your own past.

He had begun business many years ago—as a wandering peddler on the blind face of a distant land, a peddler who carried his wares on his back, a peddler who usually came at the fall of darkness and was always gone the next morning, leaving bloodshed, horror, and unhappiness behind him.

It seems logical, but logic often has little to do with the way people behave.

It’s like my mother used to say—people have more fun than anybody, except for horses, and they can’t.

lies and love rarely went together, and never for long.

Castle Rock Middle School was a frowning pile of red brick standing between the Post Office and the Library, a holdover from the time when the town elders didn’t feel entirely comfortable with a school unless it looked like a reformatory.

He killed my parakeet and shit on my mother.

She looks like a woman who just got laid . . . and had about three orgasms.

Right now it’s October, and in The Rock we let October stay just as long as she wants to. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best time of year. Spring’s nice here, but I’ll take October over May every time.