They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

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

The late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood.

Little kids' minds are very, very strong. They bend. There's a lot of tensile strength and they don't break. We start our kids off on things like "Hansel and Gretel," which features child abandonment, kidnapping, attempted murder, forcible detention, cannibalism, and finally murder by cremation. And the kids love it.

Acknowledge your good fortune by sharing it.

They had discovered one could grow as hungry for light as for food.

On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew.