The Road To The Dark Tower: Exploring Stephen King's Magnum Opus Quotes
"He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute."
To the endless possibilities of five hundred blank sheets of 7" x 10" bright green paper, King added 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came' by Robert Browning, a poem he’d studied two years previously in a course covering the earlier romantic poets.
"He confessed in the afterword to The Gunslinger that his vision of the overall arc of the epic was unclear."
"Roland and his friends believed the Dark Tower didn’t exist except as a symbol."
"Roland’s future depends on what remaining fire the aging bird has left."
"Roland is capable of completing his quest alone and seems content to do so."
"The only thing I know for sure is that all these old friends of mine are as alive as they ever were. And as dangerous."
"I felt like if I didn’t finish this time I never would."
"Roland doesn’t change substantially in The Gunslinger, but the potential for and the promise of change come through strongly."
"What had once been a thing so easy it didn’t even bear thinking about had suddenly become a trick akin to juggling."
"I am now a man with no food, with two less fingers and one less toe than I was born with; I am a gunslinger with shells which may not fire; I am sickening from a monster’s bite and have no medicine; I have a day’s water if I’m lucky; I may be able to walk perhaps a dozen miles if I press myself to the last extremity. I am, in short, a man on the edge of everything."
"Beating heroin was child’s play compared to beating your childhood."
"WWWhat’s past is past, and what’s ahead is ahead. The second is ka, and takes care of itself."
"You could be a gunslinger. I needn’t be the last after all. It’s in you, Eddie. I see it. I feel it."
"After you’re really on your feet again, I may, like, re-examine my options."
"Now Eddie held Henry’s hand crossing streets."
"The moment she removes the glass from its sealed box, she is addicted."
"The lives of those in Hambry who won’t agree to support Farson are at risk."
"Roland is "far from the relentless creature he would eventually become, but the seeds of that relentlessness were there."
"He’s not so lovesick that he fails to notice signs that something may be amiss in Mejis."
"The moment a cloud of dust in the distance heralds the Wolves’ arrival, things start to go wrong."
"The Big Combination powered the multiverse’s evils, big and small; the rose is the advocate for multiuniversal good."
"Susannah is stunned when Mia confirms that Roland, not Eddie, is the baby’s father."
"Only a return of the magic could possibly save it, and . . . your dinh deals only in lead."
"He may dream of standing on its allure . . . and chant the names of his fallen comrades, and of his line all the way back to Arthur Eld."
"Sayre underestimates Roland’s 'divine combination of training, observation and hair-trigger intuition.'"
"This is the Keystone World, though, and anyone they kill here will stay dead."
"Cullum, the first of two useful people ka delivers to Roland in the general store, is an army veteran who follows Roland’s instructions without question."
"Eddie reminds himself to ask Roland something later but he 'never got the chance; before the question occurred to him again, death had slipped between them.'"
"For someone supposedly in fear of his life, Tower hasn’t been keeping a very low profile—he’s been out in the community buying books."
"Roland operates on Eddie to remove a bullet in his lower leg from the shoot-out. Roland tells Eddie pain rises from the heart to the head and puts a belt in his mouth to catch the pain."
"Eddie turns down the painkillers Deepneau offers; they’re too close to heroin for comfort."
"Eddie convinces Roland to go to Bridgton to visit King. He trusts that by the time they get there, ka will tell them why they need to go."
"Roland closes the deal with Tower. 'It isn’t every day I get called the scum of the earth by a man who promises to make me a millionaire and also to relieve me of my heart’s heaviest burden,' Tower says before signing the paper that gives ownership of the vacant lot to the ka-tet."
"The smell of roasting meat greets them. The restaurant is full of low men and women, and vampires. Sayre is there, too, with a hole in his forehead, looking like he had been shot at close range."
"On his way to Stephen King’s house, Eddie suggests that if they could convince Susannah’s godfather, Moses Carver, to merge Tet Corporation and Holmes Dental, he could turn the new company into one of the richest corporations in the history of the world with their knowledge of the future."
"King recognizes Roland, greeting him by saying, 'You again,' before asking where Eddie is. He hasn’t written about Eddie’s death yet and tries to tell Roland he lost the Beam, but Roland forces him to sit up in spite of his injuries, and points to the sky, where it is perfectly clear. 'You didn’t lose it, you turned your coward’s eye away.'"
"Ka is the wheel that turns the world. Sometimes it's a big stone rolling down the hillside."
"What does it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul?"
"You're the one who never changes. It'll be your damnation, boy. You'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your walk to hell."
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."
"Perhaps this time when you get there it will be different."
"How we make large circles in earth for ourselves. Around we go, back to the start and the start is there again: resumption, which was ever the curse of daylight."
"Roland’s moment of desolation is tempered with hope. He may get it right someday."
"The same point where Walter o’Dim started to believe the prophecy that Roland would begin the end of matters and ultimately cause the tumble of that which he wished to save."
"Roland tries to pull back, but the hands of Gan pull him through the last door, the one he always sought, the one he always found."
"The baboon represents his addiction, but it also represents his brother, Henry, who pulled Eddie down into the muck of drugs and laziness with him."
"As for me, I don’t matter much," thirteen-year-old Eddie tells Jake in a dream. "I’m supposed to guide you, that’s all."
"Henry is responsible for Eddie’s descent into a life of crime."
"Eddie quickly becomes better than his brother at basketball, hiding his superiority to avoid Henry's aggression."
"Henry surprises everyone by saying he’d want Eddie at his side in a brawl, because 'when Eddie’s in that fuckin zone, he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire.'"
"Eddie lingers under his brother’s shadow even after Henry dies."
"Roland sees deep steel in Eddie from the very first."
"What stops Eddie from killing himself while going cold turkey is the fact that Roland is deathly ill and needs him."
"Roland recognizes him as Cuthbert’s twin."
"Eddie respects Roland’s skills and talents but understands the addiction that drives the gunslinger as only another addict could."
"Eddie shoulders more responsibility as time goes by."
"Eddie's final words to Roland are 'Thank you, father.'"
"I am three women... I who was; I who had no right to be but was; I am the woman who you saved."
"The Crimson King, known to the Lord of Discordia from an early age, tries repeatedly to divert King from transcribing the Dark Tower series."
"King thinks he is either the creative force known as Gan, or possessed by Gan."
"King’s life is a constant battle with ka and the story it wants him to write."
"King reflects on this in the closing pages of The Dark Tower. He addresses imaginary readers who won’t be satisfied until they learn what awaits Roland within the Tower."
"Stephen King and Randall Flagg have a lifelong relationship."
"Flagg’s face is fair and broad browed but not, for all its pleasant looks, in any way human."
"The Crimson King’s low men have performed many tasks over the generations, but their chief job has been to find Breakers."
"The Crimson King is Roland’s greatest enemy and has been his ancestors’ foil for generations."
"The Crimson King sends Atropos to manipulate Ed Deepneau into orchestrating Patrick Danville’s death."
"King’s name is first mentioned on the deli board at Calvin Tower’s bookstore."
"King shows up in person in 1977, a writer not particularly well known outside of his home state."
"Roland’s quest to reach the Dark Tower is an Aristotelian epic."
"If the Tower were to fall, he wouldn’t be able to climb the staircase to the room at the top."
"The Tower is made of the flesh of creation, and those who know of it and believe in it think that something dwells—or once dwelled—there."
"Nothing drives Roland to go beyond saving the Tower other than his own curiosity, the age-old drive to discover the nature of existence."
"Is there a God? Does He control creation from atop the Tower, or has He abdicated or passed on to the clearing at the end of the path?"
"Roland’s choice to continue past the Crimson King’s castle and confront the Tower carries enormous risks."
"Towers are often used to symbolize an individual’s self-constructed existence, perception, philosophy, or consciousness."
"The Tower is one of the major tarot arcana, known as a villain card because very little good is ever implied by it, regardless of its orientation."
"Even at its best, the card stands for necessary change, sometimes a blessing in disguise."
"His ka-given objective is worthy—what purer goal could there be than to save all of creation or die trying?"
"It’s the same theme debated in the Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan. Should one person be sacrificed to save others?"
"The key isn’t the only thing Jake will find in this lot that proves crucial to their quest."
"We’re with you because we have to be—that’s your goddamned ka. But we’re also with you because we want to be."
"Every sunlit field of scampering rabbits conceals its shining wire of death."
"All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
"The rose exists here. It’s not in any safe deposit box, it’s not in any bank, it’s not in the possession of any blind corporation. It’s right here."
"To the best of my knowledge, there were never coin-op storage lockers in the World Trade Center."
"That we retain our sanity in the face of these simple yet blinding mysteries is nearly divine."