Roland Deschain Quotes

“Time's the thief of memory”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

“We are going to fight. We are going to be hurt. And in the end, we will stand.”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“If you love me, then love me.”
― Stephen King

“He wanted her, suddenly and completely, with a desperate depth of feeling that felt like sickness. Everything he was and everything he had come for, it seemed, was secondary to her.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“I'd not trust sai King much further than I could throw his heaviest grandfather.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“That's bullshit, buddy. And you know it.
The trouble was, he DIDN'T know it. He had come face to face with something Susannah had found out for herself after shooting the bear: he could TALK about how he didn't want to be a gunslinger, how he didn't want to be tramping around this crazy world where the three of them seemed to be the only human life, that what he really wanted more than anything else was to be standing on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, popping his fingers, munching a chili-dog, and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival blast out of his Walkman earphones as he watched the girls go by, those ultimately sexy New York girls with their pouty go-to-hell mouths and their long legs in short skirts. He could talk about those things until he was blue in the face, but his heart knew other things. It knew that he had ENJOYED blowing the electronic menagerie back to glory, at least while the game was on and Roland's gun was his own private handheld thunderstorm. He had ENJOYED kicking the robot rat, even though it had hurt his foot and even though he had been scared shitless. In some weird way, that part--the being scared part--actually seemed to add to the enjoyment.
All that was bad enough, but his heart knew something even worse: that if a door leading back to New York appeared in front of him right now, he might not walk through it. Not, at least, until he had seen the Dark Tower for himself. He was beginning to believe that Roland's illness was a communicable disease.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Somebody bring the Thorazine and the straitjacket," Eddie called. "Roland just went over the high side."
Roland paid no attention to this; he was coming to understand that Eddie's jokes and his clowning were his way of dealing with stress.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Roland: Handsome is as handsome does, Blaine. In any case, here it is: What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?

Blaine: THAT IS INDEED HANDSOME. SIMPLE BUT HANDSOME, JUST THE SAME. THE ANSWER IS A HUMAN BEING, WHO CRAWLS ON HANDS AND KNEES IN BABYHOOD, WALKS ON TWO LEGS DURING ADULTHOOD, AND WHO GOES ABOUT WITH THE HELP OF A CANE IN OLD AGE.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Well," Eddie said, "I don't know how hard it'll seem to you, but it struck me as a toughie." Nor did he know the answer, since that section of Riddle-De-Dum! had been torn out, but he didn't think that made any difference; their knowing the answers hadn't been part of the ground-rules.
"I SHALL HEAR AND ANSWER."
"No sooner spoken than broken. What is it?"
"SILENCE, A THING YOU KNOW LITTLE ABOUT, EDDIE OF NEW YORK," Blaine said with no pause at all, and Eddie felt his heart drop a little. There was no need to consult with the others; the answer was self-evident. And having it come back at him so quickly was the real bummer. Eddie never would have said so, but he had harbored the hope-almost a secret surety-of bringing Blaine down with a single riddle, ker-smash, all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Blaine together again. The same secret surety, he supposed, that he had harbored every time he picked up a pair of dice in some sharpie's back-bedroom crap game, every time he called for a hit on seventeen while playing blackjack. That feeling that you couldn't go wrong because you were you, the best, the one and only.
"Yeah," he said, sighing. "Silence, a thing I know little about. Thankee-sai, Blaine, you speak truth."
"I HOPE YOU HAVE DISCOVERED SOMETHING WHICH WILL HELP YOU," Blaine said, and Eddie thought: You fucking mechanical liar. The complacent tone had returned to Blaine's voice, and Eddie found it of some passing interest that a machine could express such a range of emotion. Had the Great Old Ones built them in, or had Blaine created an emotional rainbow for himself at some point? A little dipolar pretty with which to pass the long decades and centuries? "DO YOU WISH ME TO GO AWAY AGAIN SO YOU MAY CONSULT?"
"Yes," Roland said.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Blaine must know thousands of riddles-perhaps millions-and that is bad. Worse, far worse, he understands the how of riddling ... the place the mind has to go to in order to make them and solve them.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“I do not shoot with my hand,'" Eddie said. He suddenly felt far away, strange to himself. It was the way he'd felt when he had seen first the slingshot and then the key in pieces of wood, just waiting for him to whittle them free ... and at the same time this feeling was not like that at all.
Roland was looking at him oddly. "Yes, Eddie, you say true. A gunslinger shoots with his mind. What have you thought of?"
"Nothing." He might have said more, but all at once a strange image-a strange memory-intervened: Roland hunkering by Jake at one of their stopping-points on the way to Lud. Both of them in front of an unlit campfire. Roland once more at his everlasting lessons. Jake's turn this time. Jake with the flint and steel, trying to quicken the fire. Spark after spark licking out and dying in the dark. And Roland had said that he was being silly. That he was just being ... well ... silly.
"No," Eddie said. "He didn't say that at all. At least not to the kid, he didn't."
"Eddie?" Susannah. Sounding concerned. Almost frightened.
Well why don't you ask him what he said, bro? That was Henry's voice, the voice of the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie. First time in a long time. Ask him, he's practically sitting right next to you, go on and ask him what he said. Quit dancing around like a baby with a load in his diapers.
Except that was a bad idea, because that wasn't the way things worked in Roland's world. In Roland's world everything was riddles, you didn't shoot with your hand but with your mind, your motherfucking mind, and what did you say to someone who wasn't getting the spark into the kindling? Move your flint in closer, of course, and that's what Roland had said: Move your flint in closer, and hold it steady.
Except none of that was what this was about. It was close, yes, but close only counts in horseshoes, as Henry Dean had been wont to say before he became the Great Sage and Eminent Junkie. Eddie's memory was jinking a little because Roland had embarrassed him ... shamed him ... made a joke at his expense ...
Probably not on purpose, but ... something. Something that had made him feel the way Henry always used to make him feel, of course it was, why else would Henry be here after such a long absence?”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland took a deep breath, then began. "Feed me and I live. Give me to drink and I die. What am I?"
"FIRE." No hesitation. Only that insufferable smugness, a tone which said That was old to me when your grandmother was young, but try again! This is more fun than I've had in centuries, so try again!”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland: I pass before the sun, Blaine, yet make no shadow. What am I?

Blaine: WIND.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland: This is as light as a feather, yet no man can hold it for long.

Blaine: (without hesitation) ONE'S BREATH.

Yet he did hesitate, Eddie thought suddenly. Jake and Susannah were watching Roland with agonized concentration, fists clenched, willing him to ask Blaine the right riddle, the stumper, the one with the Get the Fuck Out of Jail Free card hidden inside it; Eddie couldn't look at them-Suze, in particular-and keep his concentration. He lowered his gaze to his own hands, which were also clenched, and forced them to open on his lap. It was surprisingly hard to do. From the aisle he heard Roland continuing to trot out the golden oldies of his youth.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland: Riddle me this, Blaine: If you break me, I'll not stop working. If you can touch me, my work is done. If you lose me, you must find me with a ring soon after. What am I?

Susannah's breath caught for a moment, and although he was looking down, Eddie knew she was thinking what he was thinking: that was a good one, a damned good one, maybe-

Blaine: (still without hesitation) THE HUMAN HEART. THIS RIDDLE IS BASED IN LARGE PART UPON HUMAN POETIC CONCEITS; SEE FOR INSTANCE JOHN AVERY, SIRONIA HUNTZ, ONDOLA, WILLIAM BLAKE, JAMES TATE, VERONICA MAYS, AND OTHERS. IT IS REMARKABLE HOW HUMAN BEINGS PITCH THEIR MINDS ON LOVE. YET IT IS CONSTANT FROM ONE LEVEL OF THE TOWER TO THE NEXT, EVEN IN THESE DEGENERATE DAYS. CONTINUE, ROLAND OF GILEAD.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Blaine: ONE MOMENT. I MUST ADJUST THE VOLUME FOR YOU TO ENJOY THE FULL EFFECT.
There was a brief, whispery hooting sound (a kind of mechanical throat-clearing) and then they were assaulted by a vast roar. It was water (a billion gallons a minute, for all Jake knew) pouring over the lip of the chasm and falling perhaps two thousand feet into the deep stone basin at the base of the falls. Streamers of mist floated past the blunt almost-faces of the jutting dogs like steam from the vents of hell. The level of sound kept climbing. Now Jake's whole head vibrated with it, and as he clapped his hands over his ears, he saw Roland, Eddie, and Susannah doing the same. Oy was barking, but Jake couldn't hear him. Susannah's lips were moving again, and again he could read the words (STOP IT, BLAINE, STOP IT!) but he couldn't hear them any more than he could hear Oy's barks, although he was sure Susannah was screaming at the top of her lungs.
And still Blaine increased the sound of the waterfall, until Jake could feel his eyes shaking in their sockets and he was sure his ears were going to short out like overstressed stereo speakers.
Then it was over. They still hung above the moon-misty drop, the moonbows still made their slow and dreamlike revolutions before the curtain of endlessly falling water, the wet and brutal stone faces of the dog-guardians continued to jut out of the torrent, but that world-ending thunder was gone.
For a moment Jake thought what he'd feared had happened, that he had gone deaf. Then he realized that he could hear Oy, still barking, and Susannah crying. At first these sounds seemed distant and flat, as if his ears had been packed with cracker-crumbs, but then they began to clarify.
Eddie put his arm around Susannah's shoulders and looked toward the route map.
Eddie: Nice guy, Blaine.
Blaine: (his booming voice sounds laughing and injured simultaneously) I MERELY THOUGHT YOU WOULD ENJOY HEARING THE SOUND OF THE FALLS AT FULL VOLUME. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT HELP YOU TO FORGET MY REGRETTABLE MISTAKE IN THE MATTER OF EDITH BUNKER.
My fault, Jake thought. Blaine may just be a machine, and a suicidal one at that, but he still doesn't like to be laughed at.
He sat beside Susannah and put his own arm around her. He could still hear the Falls of the Hounds, but the sound was now distant.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland: We are very little creatures: all of us have different features. One of us in glass is set; one of us you'll find in jet. Another you may see in tin, and a fourth is boxed within. If the fifth should you pursue, it can never fly from you. What are we?

Blaine: A AND E AND I AND O AND U. THE VOWELS OF THE HIGH SPEECH. ALTHOUGH THAT PARTICULAR RIDDLE IS NOT FROM YOUR TEACHER, ROLAND OF GILEAD; I KNOW IT FROM JONATHAN SWIFT OF LONDON--A CITY IN THE WORLD YOUR FRIENDS COME FROM.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Blaine: I HAVE A NUMBER OF SWITCHING FUNCTIONS TO PERFORM. THESE WILL TAKE ABOUT FORTY MINUTES AND ARE LARGELY AUTOMATIC. WHILE THIS SWITCHOVER TAKES PLACE AND THE ACCOMPANYING CHECKLIST IS RUNNING, WE SHALL CONTINUE OUR CONTEST. I AM ENJOYING IT VERY MUCH.
Eddie: (still sounding as if he isn't quite with them) It's like when you have to switch over from electric to diesel on the train to Boston. At Hartford or New Haven or one of those other places where no one in their right fucking mind would want to live.
Susannah: Eddie? What are you--?
Roland touches Susannah's shoulder and shakes his head.
Blaine: (in his expansive gosh-but-this-is-fun voice) NEVER MIND EDDIE OF NEW YORK.
Eddie: That's right. Never mind Eddie of New York.
Blaine: HE KNOWS NO GOOD RIDDLES. BUT YOU KNOW MANY, ROLAND OF GILEAD. TRY ME WITH ANOTHER.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Susannah looked over at Eddie and felt a passing ripple of irritation. He seemed to have lost interest in the whole thing--had "zoned out," in his weird 1980s slang. She thought to throw an elbow into his side, wake him up a little, then remembered Roland shaking his head at her and didn't. You wouldn't know he was thinking, not from that slack expression on his face, but maybe he was. If so, you better hurry it up a little, precious, she thought.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“What builds up castles, tears down mountains, makes some blind, helps others to see? SAND. (Thankee-sai)
What lives in winter, dies in summer, and grows with its roots upward? AN ICICLE. (Blaine, you say true)
Man walks over, man walks under, in time of war he burns asunder? A BRIDGE. (Thankee-sai)”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland: Blaine, what has eyes yet cannot see?
Blaine: THERE ARE FOUR ANSWERS: NEEDLES, STORMS, POTATOES, AND A TRUE LOVER.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Blaine: GOOD, GUNSLINGER. A VALIANT EFFORT. BUT YOU ARE NOT SCHEHERAZADE, NOR DO WE HAVE A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS IN WHICH TO HOLD PALAVER.
Roland: I don't understand you. I know not this Scheherazade.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Roland: We play for keeps. No one cries off.
Blaine: CORRECT. NO ONE CRIES OFF.
Roland: All right, Blaine, we play for keeps and no one cries off. Here's the next.
Blaine: AS ALWAYS, I AWAIT IT WITH PLEASURE.
Roland: (to Jake) Be ready with yours, Jake; I'm almost at the end of mine. (to Blaine) Blaine, I occur once in a minute, twice in every moment, but not once in a hundred thousand years. What am I?
Blaine: THE LETTER M.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Little Blaine: You're making him angry. Oh, you're making him SO angry.
Eddie: (kindly) Get lost, squirt. (to Blaine) Answer this one, Blaine: the big moron and the little moron were fighting on the bridge over the River Send. The big moron fell off. How come the little moron didn't fall off, too?
Blaine: THAT IS UNWORTHY OF OUR CONTEST. I WILL NOT ANSWER.
Roland: (with blazing eyes) What do you say, Blaine? I would not understand you well. Are you saying that you cry off?
Blaine: NO! OF COURSE NOT! BUT--
Roland: Then answer, if you can. Answer the riddle.
Blaine: (gratingly) IT'S NOT A RIDDLE! IT'S A JOKE, SOMETHING FOR STUPID CHILDREN TO CACKLE OVER IN THE PLAY YARD!
Roland: (confidently) Answer now or I declare the contest over and our winner. You must answer, for it is stupidity you complain of, not transgression of the rules, which we agreed upon mutually.
Blaine: (clicking his tongue loudly and gratingly, causing Eddie to wince and Oy to flatten his ears against his skull; a pause of three seconds, then, sulkily) THE LITTLE MORON DID NOT FALL OFF BECAUSE HE WAS A LITTLE MORE ON. MORE PHONETIC COINCIDENCE. TO EVEN ANSWER SUCH AN UNWORTHY RIDDLE MAKES ME FEEL SOILED.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“Eddie: Why do police lieutenants wear belts?
The lights in the Barony coach began to flicker. An odd thing was happening to the walls, as well; they began to fade in and out of true, lunging toward transparency, perhaps, and then opaquing again. Seeing this phenomenon even out of the corner of his eye made Eddie feel a bit whoopsie.
Eddie: Blaine? Answer.
Roland: (agreeably) Answer. Answer, or I declare the contest at an end and hold you to your promise.
Blaine: TO...TO HOLD UP THEIR PANTS? (repeating as a statement) TO HOLD UP THEIR PANTS. A RIDDLE BASED UPON THE EXAGGERATED SIMPLICITY OF--
Eddie: Right. Good one, Blaine, but never mind trying to kill time--it won't work. Next--
Blaine: I INSIST YOU STOP ASKING THESE SILLY--
Eddie: Then stop the mono. If you're that upset, stop right here, and I will.
Blaine: NO.
Eddie: Okay, then, on we go. What's Irish and stays out in back of the house, even in the rain?
Blaine: (clicking his tongue deafeningly and gratingly; a long pause) PADDY O'FURNITURE.”
― Stephen King, Wizard and Glass

“I called it a robot," Eddie answered, "but that's not what it really was. Susannah's right--the only thing robots bleed when you shoot them is Quaker State 10-40. I think it was what people of my world call a cyborg, Roland--a creature that's part machine and part flesh and blood. There was a movie I saw...we told you about movies, didn't we?"
Smiling a little, Roland nodded.
"Well, this movie was called Robocop, and the guy in it wasn't a lot different from the bear Susannah killed. How did you know where she should shoot it?”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Worlds don't GROW, Roland."
"Don't they? When I was a boy, Eddie, there were maps. I remember one in particular. It was called the Greater Kingdoms of the Western Earth. It showed my land, which was called by the name Gilead. It showed the Downland Baronies, which were overrun by riot and civil war in the year after I won my guns, and the hills, and the desert, and the mountains, and the Western Sea. It was a long distance from Gilead to the Western Sea--a thousand miles or more--but it had taken me over twenty years to cross that distance."
"That's impossible," Susannah said quickly, fearfully. "Even if you WALKED the whole distance it couldn't take twenty years."
"Well, you have to allow for stops to write postcards and drink beer," Eddie said, but they both ignored him.
"I didn't walk but rode most of the distance on horseback," Roland said. "I was--slowed up, shall we say?--every now and then, but for most of that time I was moving. Moving away from John Farson, who led the revolt which toppled the world I grew up in and who wanted my head on a pole in his courtyard--he had good reason to want that, I suppose, since I and my compatriots were responsible for the deaths of a great many of his followers--and because I stole something he held very dear."
"What, Roland?" Eddie asked curiously.
Roland shook his head. "That's a story for another day...or maybe never. For now, think not of that but of this: I've come MANY thousands of miles. Because the world is growing."
"A thing like that just can't happen," Eddie reiterated, but he was badly shaken, all the same. "There'd be earthquakes...floods...tidal waves...I don't know what all..."
"LOOK!" Roland said furiously. "Just look around you! What do you see? A world that is slowing down like a child's top even as it speeds up and moves on in some other way none of us understand. Look at your kills, Eddie! Look at your kills, for your father's sake!”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“The banks on either side had grown steadily steeper, and now, at their tops, they could see slim, pointed shapes looming against the sky. Roland thought of arrowheads--huge ones, weapons made by a tribe of giants. To his companions, they looked like rockets or guided missiles. Susannah thought of Redstones fired from Cape Canaveral; Eddie thought about SAMs, some built to be fired from the backs of flatbed trucks, stored all over Europe; Jake thought of ICBMs hiding in reinforced concrete silos under the plains of Kansas and the unpopulated mountains of Nevada, programmed to hit back at China or the USSR in the event of nuclear armageddon. All of them felt as if they had passed into a dark and woeful zone of shadow, or into a countryside laboring under some old but still powerful curse.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Gasher looked up. "YOU," he snarled.
"Me," Roland agreed. He fired once and the left side of Gasher's head disintegrated. The man went flying backward, bloodstained yellow scarf unravelling, and landed on top of the Tick-Tock Man. His feet drummed spastically on the iron grillework for a moment and then fell still.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands

“Roland: Blaine, where may you find roads without carts, forests without trees, cities without houses?
Blaine: ON A MAP.
Roland: You say true. Next. I have a hundred legs but cannot stand, a long neck but no head; I eat the maid's life. What am I?
Blaine: A BROOM, GUNSLINGER. ANOTHER VARIATION ENDS, 'I EASE THE MAID'S LIFE.' I LIKE YOURS BETTER.
Roland: (ignoring Blaine's response) Cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind the stars and beneath the hills. Ends life and kills laughter. What is it, Blaine?
Blaine: THE DARK.”
― Stephen King