View Quote He had a massive stroke. He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation's equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on?

View Quote Rita Blakemoor

View Quote You couldn't get hold of the things you'd done and turn them right again. Such a power might be given to the gods, but it was not given to women and men, and that was probably a good thing. Had it been otherwise, people would probably die of old age still trying to rewrite their teens.

View Quote Afterward Larry felt as if he had been through a long pillow-fight in which all the pillows had been treated with a low-grade poison gas.

View Quote Starkey flashed back in time twenty-two years to 1968. He had been in the officers’ club in San Diego when the news came about Calley and what had happened at Mei Lai Four. Starkey had been playing poker with four other men, two of whom now sat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The poker game had been forgotten, utterly forgotten, in a discussion of exactly what this was going to do to the military — not any one branch but the entire military — in the witch-hunt atmosphere of Washington’s fourth estate. And one of their number, a man who could now dial directly to the miserable worm who had been masquerading as a Chief Executive since January 20, 1989, had laid his cards carefully down on the green felt table and he had said: Gentlemen, a regrettable incident has occurred. And when a regrettable incident occurs which involves any branch of the United States Military, we don’t question the roots of that incident but rather how the branches may best be pruned. The service is mother and father to us. And if you find your mother raped or your father beaten and robbed, before you call the police or begin an investigation, you cover their nakedness. Because you love them.

View Quote Starkey put his fingers under the man's chin and pushed his head back. As he did so, the man's eyeballs fell back into his head with a meaty little thud. The words on the sign had been written in red Magic Marker. NOW YOU KNOW IT WORKS, the sign said, ANY QUESTIONS?

View Quote I have harbored hate of the Lord in my heart. Every man or woman who loves Him, they hate Him too, because He’s a hard God, a jealous God, He Is, what He Is, and in this world He’s apt to repay service with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars. Even the joy of serving Him is a bitter joy.

View Quote Mother Abagail

View Quote Did you know that Dairy Queen ice cream is mostly bubbles?

View Quote Frannie

View Quote M-O-O-N, that spells ILLEGAL!

View Quote Tom Cullen

View Quote There are a great many ways to commit suicide you know.

View Quote The Stand (Uncut), Chapter 55 p. 799

View Quote It was things like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, he thought, that made you believe the world was maybe just as well off destroyed.

View Quote The Stand (Uncut), Chapter 61 p. 934

View Quote When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "one word at a time."

View Quote The Stand (Uncut), Preface (part 2)

View Quote Somebody had slipped. Either that, or the disease that Charles D. Campion had brought to Arnette was a lot more communicable than anyone had guessed. Either way, the integrity of the Atlanta Plague Center had been breached, and Stu thought that everyone who had been there was now getting a chance to do a little firsthand research on the virus they called A-Prime or the superflu. They still did tests on him here, but they seemed desultory. The schedule had become slipshod. Results were scrawled down and he had a suspicion that someone looked at them cursorily, shook his head, and dumped them in the nearest shredder. That wasn't the worst, though. The worst was the guns. The nurses who came in to take blood or spit or urine were how always accompanied by a soldier in a white-suit, and the soldier had a gun in a plastic Baggie. The Baggie was fastened over the wrist of the soldier's right gauntlet. The gun was an army-issue .45, and Stu had no doubt that, if he tried any of the games he had tried with Deitz, the .45 would tear the end of the Baggie into smoking, burning shreds and Stu Redman would become a Golden Oldie. If they were just going through the motions now, then he had become expendable. Being under detention was bad. Being under detention and being expendable... that was very bad.

View Quote p 171-172

View Quote The elevator doors slid shut behind him; there was a hum as it began to go up automatically. It wouldn't come down again unless somebody else keyed it, Starkey knew; as soon as the installation's integrity had been breached, the computers had switched all the elevators to the general containment program. Why were these poor men and women lying here? Obviously they had been hoping the computers would **** up the switch-over to the emergency procedures. Why not? It even had a certain logic to it. Everything else had ****ed up.

View Quote p. 178

View Quote "Nothing personal," Mathers said sincerely. "Just business, you understand. Myself, I hope you make out. That Markham law's a bitch." He strode away and Lloyd saw the door-guard standing atop the ramp in the truck-loading bay on the other side of the exercise yard. His thumbs were hooked in his Sam Browne belt and he was grinning at Lloyd. When he saw he had Lloyd's complete, undivided attention, the door-guard shot him the bird with the middle fingers of both hands. Mathers strolled over to the wall, and the door-guard threw him a pack of Tareytons. Mathers put them in his breast pocket, sketched a salute, and walked away. Lloyd lay on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chest, hands clutching his cramping belly, and Devins's words echoed in his brain: It's a tough old world, Lloyd, it's a tough old world. Right.

View Quote p. 195

View Quote Nick went outside. Mike was standing on the curb, his hand on a parking meter, looking at the empty street. "My God," he whispered, and turned his stunned face to look at Nick. "All this? All this?" Nick nodded, his hand still on the gunbutt. Mike started to say something, and it turned into a coughing spasm. He covered his mouth, then wiped his lips. "I'm getting the Christ out of here," he said. "You're wise, you'll do the same thing, mutie. This is like the black death, or somethin." Nick shrugged, and Mike started down the sidewalk. He moved faster and faster until he was nearly running. Nick watched him until he was out of sight, and then went back inside. He never saw Mike again.

View Quote p. 206

View Quote Bob Palmer appeared again. "If you have children, ladies and gentlemen," he said quietly, "we would advise that you ask them to leave the room." A grainy shot of a truck backing down a pier jutting out over Boston Harbor, a big olive-covered army truck. Below it, riding uncertainly, was a barge covered with canvas tarps. Two soldiers, rugose and alien in gas masks, jumped down from the truck's cab. The picture jiggled and joggled, and then became steady again as they pulled back the canvas sheet covering the open rear end of the truck. Then they jumped up inside, and bodies began to cascade out onto the barge: women, old men, children, police, nurses; they came in a cartwheeling flood that never seemed to end. At some point during the film-clip it became clear that the soldiers were using pitchforks to get them out. Palmer went on broadcasting for two hours, his steadily hoarsening voice reading clippings and bulletins, interviewing other members of the crew. It went on until somebody on the ground floor realized that they didn't have to re-take the sixth floor to stop it. At 11:16, the WBZ transmitter was shut down permanently with twenty pounds of plastique. Palmer and the others on the sixth floor were summarily executed on charges of treason to their government, the United States of America.

View Quote p. 213-214

View Quote "This is Major Alfred Nunn, United States Army. I am taking provisional and temporary control of United States forces in the San Francisco area. The handful of traitors in this HQ have been dealt with. I am in command, repeat, in command. The holding operation will go on. Deserters and defectors will be dealt with as before: extreme prejudice, repeat, extreme prejudice. I am now-" More gunfire. A scream. Background: "-them all! Get them all! Death to the war-pigs-" Heavy gunfire. Then silence on the band.

View Quote p. 225

View Quote "Harold, if you'll excuse me-" "But whatever can you be doing, my child?" The unreality was trying to creep back in again, and she found herself wondering just how much the human brain could be expected to stand before snapping like an overtaxed rubber band. My parents are dead, but I can take it. Some weird disease seems to have spread across the entire country, maybe the entire world, mowing down the righteous and the unrighteous alike- I can take it. I'm digging a hole in the garden my father was weeding only last week, and when it's deep enough I guess I'm going to put him in it- I think I can take it. But Harold Lauder in Roy Brannigan's Cadillac, feeling me up with his eyes and calling me "my child"? I don't know, my Lord, I just don't know.

View Quote p. 250

View Quote Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

View Quote Glen Bateman

View Quote "I am too old for adventure," the Judge said, putting his clippers away, "but I hope I am not too old to do what I feel is right. There is an old woman out there someplace who has probably gone to a miserable death because she felt it was right. Prompted by religious mania, I have no doubt. But people who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad."

View Quote p. 810

View Quote A new sound in the rainy afternoon. Bobby Terry's head jerked up. The rain, yes, making its steel drum sound on the cabs of the two vehicles, the grumblig of two idling motors, and- A strange clocking sound, like rundown bootheels hammering swiftly along the secondary road macadam. "No," Bobby Terry whispered. He began to turn around. The clocking sound was speeding up. A fast walk, a trot, a jog, run, sprint, and Bobby Terry got all the way around, too late, he was coming. Flagg was coming like some terrible horror monster out of the scariest picture ever made. The dark man's cheeks were flushed with jolly color, his eyes were twinkling with happy good fellowship, and a great hungry voracious grin stretched his lips over huge tombstone teeth, shark teeth, and his hands were held out in front of him, and there were shiny black crowfeathers fluttering from his hair. No, Bobby Terry tried to say, but nothing came out. "HEY, BOBBY TERRY, YOU SCROOOOWED IT UP!" the dark man bellowed, and fell upon the hapless Bobby Terry. There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.

View Quote p. 943

View Quote Lloyd got the call from Stan Bailey at Indian Springs fifteen minutes later. Stan was nearly hysterical between his fury at Trash and his fear of the dark man. Carl Hough and Bill Jamieson had taken off from the Springs at 6:02PM to run a recon mission east of Vegas. One of their other trainee pilots, Cliff Benson, had been riding with Carl as an observer. At 6:12PM both helicopters had blown up in the air. Stunned though he had been, Stan had sent five men over to Hangar 9, where two other skimmers and three large Baby Huey copters were stored. They found explosive taped to all five of the remaining choppers, and incendiary fuses rigged to simple kitchen timers. The fuses were not the same as the ones Trash had rigged to the fuel trucks, but they were very similar. There was not much room for doubt. "It was the Trashcan Man," Stan said. "He went hogwild. Jesus Christ only knows what else he's wired up to explode out here." "Check everything," Lloyd said. His heartbeat was rapid and thready with fear. Adrenaline boiled through his body, and his eyes felt as if they were in danger of popping from his head. "Check everything! You get every man jack out there and go from one end to the other of that ****-knocking base. You hear me, Stan?" "Why bother?" "Why bother?" Lloyd screamed. "Do I have to draw you a picture, shitheels? What's the big dude gonna say if the whole base-" "All our pilots are dead," Stan said softly. "Don't you get it, Lloyd? Even Cliff, and he wasn't very ****ing good. We've got six guys that aren't even close to soloing and no teachers. What do we need those jets for now, Lloyd?" And he hung up, leaving Lloyd to sit thunderstruck, finally realizing.

View Quote p. 1011

View Quote Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire.

View Quote p. 1085

View Quote "Frannie," he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes. "What, Stuart?" "Do you think... do you think people ever learn anything?" She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue. "I don't know," she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more, to illuminate her first response, and could only say it again: I don't know.

View Quote p. 1149

View Quote Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.

View Quote p. 1153