The Dark Half Quotes
"The world is one strange fucking place."
"Death and Teddy Bears, she said, would be 'the final, perfect comment on the American way of death, don’t you think so, Thad?'"
"People magazine, did you say? Well, say! That’s something, isn’t it? Somebody from town in People magazine!"
"I’m as vulnerable to the siren-song of money as anyone else."
"A novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay."
"This is the place where all rail service terminates, Thad."
"Old cops, bold cops, but no old bold cops."
"It was a warm night, and even if it’d been a little chilly, he most likely would have been okay."
"Dear friends, we are here today to mourn the unlikely passing of Trooper Warren Hamilton." That would be très tacky."
"I think we’re alone, dear," Trooper Hamilton said.
"Holy shit," Hamilton murmured. "Ask Mamma if she believes this happy crappy."
"He drove it like that? Jesus Christ, all the way from Maine he drove it like that? Ask Mamma—"
"What did he tell the drive-up girl?" Hamilton muttered. "He cut himself shaving?"
"Almost embarrassed yourself, there, Holmes," he said in a voice that was not at all steady.
"Her navy-blue dress stretched and relaxed over a bosom which was rather too large to simply be called ample. Her meaty arms swung like pendulums."
"This wasn’t a junkie neighborhood, but when it came to ripping off some idiot’s apartment, the junkies were more than willing to cross boundary lines."
"TURN THAT FUCKING RECORD-PLAYER DOWN!" she yelled at the top of her lungs.
"Oh Jesus," Liz moaned, "what is this? Tell us!"
"The alternative," he said, "is for us to go back and get a warrant for your arrest, Mr. Beaumont."
"I’m not going anywhere with you," Thad said.
"Quit now, Liz," Thad said, not unlocking his gaze from Pangborn’s.
"I don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on. I’m going crazy trying to figure it out."
"I’m sorry that he’s dead, but that’s what he was, just the same."
"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it’s probably a duck."
"He’s back!" Liz had cried in perfectly understandable irritation and dismay.
"Thad is divorcing Liz, and we two shall marry in the spring!"
"I bet he would have gotten a hollow tooth filled with cyanide if it was legal to sell them."
"I’m still not over being angry," Thad interjected, "and the guy’s dead."
"He saw Thad’s Suburban pull into one of the ten-minute parking slots near the post office."
"That’s what Clawson called it, anyway. I think I can quote the last bit by heart."
"It’s as odd as a cod. Mrs. Arsenault thought he’d started to cross the road or was at least on the verge of it when Homer came poking along in his pick-up."
"So you see, it’s been good for both of us."
"Stark was a best-selling writer, after all, and the fact that he never really existed at all made for interesting filler on the back pages."
"Someone signed off for him... and that’s a big difference."
"Why would anyone resort to murder over this? Especially after the secret had already come out?"
"A fiction by a fiction. That’s not bad. Not bad at all."
"Stark’s the man the crocodile-hunter loves. He probably hates you almost as much as he hates—hated—Clawson."
"I’m sorry we couldn’t be more helpful," Liz told him.
"You’re keeping secrets, Thad. That’s no good. It never was."
"Sometimes people lie just by being quiet."
"I’m going to take care of all of them, one by one. Just make sure I don’t have to take care of you. The sparrows are flying again, Thad—remember that."
"It’s perfectly simple—not all secrets are bad secrets. Some are good secrets. Some are necessary secrets. And this one is both of those."
"Down here we call that fool’s stuffing."
"You haven’t got a problem; just put you some pork gravy on it. Shit with pork gravy on it tastes right fine on a cold night."
"No need to get your panties all in a bunch."
"I’m not going to bother you anymore, Thad, but let me give you at least one chunk of advice before I go. May do you some good."
"I’m not a bit sorry I did it, because I did love those books, Thad."
"It’s been a busy week, Thad. I been hoppin as fast as a one-legged man in an ass-kickin contest."
"I’m not going to bother you anymore. It’s—"
"We could discuss it all the way to hell and back, but it’d take awhile."
"I believe you could call what I did therapy, but I don’t think there’s much future in it, do you?"
"I think they were the only things kept me sane."
"Don’t you get thinkin I’m George Stark. That’s the mistake I made."
"The differences are in Thad’s print, and they come only at stress-points."
"Right now everyone’s focusing on these three minute differences, because they want to hang onto their assumption that no two voice-prints are ever alike."
"He sounded like he was drinking lemonade."
"That’s the craziest thing I ever heard."
"What we need is for someone to turn him off."
"It’s incredible, all right. You know it, I know it, and they know it, too."
"Sherlock Holmes say at least one thing that still holds true in crime detection: when you eliminate all the impossible explanations, whatever is left is your answer."
"That might make for shitty and immoral reporting, but it made for wonderful fiction."
"He thought of making Thad grab another pencil from the mason jar and use it to stab himself again—in the eye this time."
"Then he stopped. He didn’t want Beaumont dead. At least not yet."
"Stark slowly relaxed his fist, and as he did, he felt the fist in which he held Beaumont’s essence—the mental fist, which had proved every bit as quick and merciless as his physical one—also open."
"He felt Beaumont, the plump white maggot, slip away, squealing and moaning."
"There was a bottle of Glenlivet standing on the stainless-steel dish-drainer by the sink."
"Stark tipped whiskey into the wound, and a bolt of pure, steely pain leaped up his arm to his shoulder."
"He tried to flex the hand. The fingers moved . . . but the sickening wave of pain that resulted was too great for further experimentation."
"He looked at his face fixedly in the wavery, spotted mirror on the medicine chest for thirty seconds or more, then shook himself back to awareness with a physical jerk."
"Stark opened the medicine cabinet, swinging the mirror and his repulsively fascinating face aside."
"He supposed if he looked at it long enough, he would fall into a hypnotic trance."
"The scream was there, but the stripped face looking at her when she opened the door locked it deep inside her, froze it, denied it, cancelled it, buried it alive."
"She heard him after her, quick as the wind."
Oh, quit that," he said. "Quit it, Beth. For your own good. It turns me on when you fight. You don’t want me turned on. I guarantee it.
"I’ll tell you anything you want to know," she said, and thought: For now.
"He smiled a little at her look of surprise. 'Oh, I know your schedule,' he said. 'I know it better than you do, maybe.'"
"He’s rotting, she thought. Rotting away right in front of me."
"You see? They like me, Beth. They like me."
"The way to help yourself, and your kids—and Thad, too, because if he does what I want, he’s gonna be fine—is to stay dumb and helpful."
"Yep. But so was Tolstoy. So was Richard Nixon, and they elected that greasy dawg President of the United States."
"Well, he’s gone from here, but he must be somewhere."
"The police thought it had to be Thad, but they didn’t know about the Toronado."
"Mississippi was George Stark’s home state."
"You were him, weren’t you? You were him and he was you."
"It’s too hot to do that, Alan. You must be coming down with a cold."
"I just wondered if the Ford and the Volvo up there belonged to you ladies."
"I am the knower. I am the owner. I am the bringer."
"One end of the teeter-totter goes up, the other end has to come down. Just another law of nature, baby. Just another law of nature."
"Take him back to hell where he belongs!"
"I'm writing the end, George. I'm writing the end in the real world."
"Take him! Take him back to hell where he belongs!"
"They've come for you, George. They've come for you. God help you now."
"He's dead, Liz. Third time's the charm. The book is closed on George Stark. Come on, you guys—let's get out of here."