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41 " Even the most worthless thing in the world can be beautiful, it just takes the right touch. "
― Robert McCammon , Swan Song
42 " She looked like the daughter of a marriage between ice and fire. "
43 " His face looked like he’d been weaned on ketchup. "
44 " I judge God, or the power that we know as God, to be very, very weak. A dying candle, if you like, surrounded by darkness. And the darkness is closing in. "
45 " Dear sweet Jesus, come down in your flying saucer and take me with you! "
46 " Do you ... do you love me?” “Like a mirror,” Friend answered. "
47 " Josh Hutchins’s battered old Pontiac gave a wheeze like an old man with phlegm in his lungs. "
48 " and as she’d watched him stagger away Swan had realized that forgiveness crippled evil, drew the poison from it like lancing a boil. "
49 " hand over her facial features. Swan’s touch was as soft as smoke. "
50 " Rudy had been a kick in life. But in death he was a real drag. "
51 " That had been close, she thought. The demons almost got me! But glory be to Jesus, and when he arrives in his flying saucer from the planet Jupiter I’ll be there on the golden shore to kiss his hand! "
52 " ...We’re going to have asshole stew tonight, folks.”“Asshole stew?” Sister asked, and frowned. “Uh… what the hell is that?”“It means you’re a stupid asshole if you don’t eat it, because that’s all we’ve got. Come on, let’s have the cans. "
53 " And he hoped that if the time ever came for that elemental fist to come crashing down, its wielder might take a moment of pause as well. "
54 " Aaron’s lower lip trembled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “But… if there ain’t any good soldiers, how do you keep the bad soldiers from winnin’? "
55 " I popped the last Tylenol about three days before the bombs hit. A poem I was writing fell to pieces. "
56 " an answer. Josh smiled. “I guess I am. "
57 " And she was aware of something else in the eyes of the mask he was wearing, something beyond the cold, lizardlike sheen of evil, something deeper ... and almost human. She remembered seeing the same thing in the eyes of Uncle Tommy the night he’d crushed her flowers, back in the Kansas trailer park seven years ago; it was something wandering and longing, forever locked away from the light and maddened like a tiger in a dark cage. It was dumb arrogance and bastard pride, stupidity and rage stoked to atomic power. But it was something of a little boy, too, wailing and lost. "
58 " I believe,' she told him, 'that this is a gift from God.''Right.' He smiled bitterly. 'Well, look around. Just look. Have you ever considered the possibility that God might be insane? "
59 " He listened to the keening of the wind whistling through holes in the walls, and he pondered the thought that there might be something out there in the dark—God or Devil or something more elemental than either—that looked at humankind as Josh had viewed the roach—less than intelligent, certainly nasty, but struggling onward on its journey, never giving up, fighting through obstacles or going around them, doing whatever it had to do to survive. And he hoped that if the time ever came for that elemental fist to come crashing down, its wielder might take a moment of pause as well. "
60 " This was turning out to be the greatest game he’d ever played. "