Cut him. Cut him while I stand here and watch. I want to see the blood flow. Don't make me tell you twice.

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.

His name is Legion. He is the king of nowhere.

He lay back, put his arm over his eyes, and tried to hold onto the anger, because the anger made him feel brave. A brave man could think. A coward couldn't.

Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.

The man in black smiled. "Shall we tell the truth then, you and I? No more lies?" I thought we had been." But the man in black persisted as if Roland hadn't spoken. "Shall there be truth between us, as two men? Not as friends, but as equals? There is an offer you will get rarely, Roland. Only equals speak the truth, that's my thought on't. Friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard. How tiresome!

I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.