The long-awaited film adaptation of Stephen King's Dark Tower series is almost upon us, which means now is the perfect time to pick up King's epic sci-fi/fantasy/horror western. If you're still on the fence about reading the books before you see the movie, I've got the 19 most-highlighted quotes from the Dark Tower series, which are sure to pique your interest.
The Dark Tower series centers on Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, as he makes his way across the desolate land of Mid-World in a last-ditch effort to save the titular Tower, which is the real, physical manifestation of the multiverse. If the Tower falls, then reality as we know it will cease to exist. Roland is aided by his ka-tet, four companions he gathers and trains over the course of the series.
King published the first book in the Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, way back in 1982. Constant Readers had to wait five years to get The Drawing of the Three (1987), and four more after that for The Waste Lands (1991). It took King six years to put out Wizard and Glass (1997), and another six to publish Wolves of the Calla (2003). The sixth and seventh books, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower, hit bookstores in June and September of 2004. King returned to the series in 2012, publishing The Wind in the Keyhole, which takes place between the fourth and fifth books. That's a lot of waiting, and I say that with generous side-eye to the George R.R. Martin fans out there.
The Dark Tower movie hasn't come together any faster than the books on which it is based. Serious talk of a Dark Tower film has been going on since at least 2007, when The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams was attached to the project. After 10 years of development hell, The Dark Tower will hit theaters on Aug. 4.
Check out the 19 most-highlighted quotes from the Dark Tower series below:
1"Fault always lies in the same place, my fine babies: with him weak enough to lay blame."
— Cortland Andrus, in The Drawing of the Three
2"Few if any seemed to have grasped the truest principle of reality: new knowledge leads always to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search."
— The Man in Black, in The Gunslinger
3"Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity."
— The Man in Black, in The Gunslinger
4"No community is easier to govern than one that rejects the very concept of community."
— Ted Brautigan, in The Dark Tower
5"He is too young to have learned to hate himself yet, but that seed is already there; given time, it will grow, and bear bitter fruit."
— from The Gunslinger
6"The boy is your gate to the man in black. The man in black is your gate to the three. The three are your way to the Dark Tower."
— The Speaking Ring Demon, in The Gunslinger
7"Control the things you can control, maggot. Let everything else take a flying fuck at you, and if you must go down, go down with your guns blazing."
— Cortland Andrus, in The Drawing of the Three
8"He fled the light and the knowledge the light implied, and so came back to himself. Even so do the rest of us; even so the best of us."
— from The Gunslinger
9"The stars were as indifferent to this as they were to wars, crucifixions, resurrections. This also would have pleased him."
— from The Gunslinger
10"The first is young, dark-haired. He stands on the brink of robbery and murder. A demon has infested him. The name of the demon is HEROIN."
— The Speaking Ring Demon, in The Gunslinger
11"For every mother who ever cursed God for her child dead in the road, for every father who ever cursed the man who sent him away from the factory with no job, for every child who was ever born to pain and asked why, this is the answer. Our lives are like these things I build. Sometimes they fall down for a reason, sometimes they fall down for no reason at all."
— Enrico Balazar, in The Drawing of the Three
12"Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover."
— from The Drawing of the Three
13"At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions."
— Stephen King, in The Gunslinger
14"Yes, three is mystic. Three stands at the heart of your quest. Another number comes later. Now the number is three."
— The Speaking Ring Demon, in The Gunslinger
15"Eloquence does not always proceed from belief, but often proceeds from the bottle."
— from Wolves of the Calla
16"Fools are the only folk on the earth who can absolutely count on getting what they deserve."
— Cortland Andrus, in Wizard and Glass
17"The lessons which are remembered the longest, Roland knew, are always the ones that are self-taught."
— from The Waste Lands
18"So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little."
— from Wizard and Glass
19"The need to recreate the myth of coherence may be one of the reasons why history exists in the first place."
— from The Dark Tower
