MISERY

It looks good on paper, and there are people who build those things who'd tell you it was easy as pie — and even keep a straight face while they said it — but the odds are always against.”

Having a novel end exactly the way you thought it would when you started out would be like shooting a Titan missile halfway around the world and having the payload drop through a basketball hoop.

The thought that grieving for a fictional character was absurd did more than cross his mind during his tossings and turnings.

It was crazy. It was funny. It was also real. Millions might scoff, but only because they failed to realize how pervasive the influence of art — even of such a degenerate sort as popular fiction — could become.

The gotta. Nasty as a hand-job in a sleazy bar, fine as a fuck from the world's most talented call-girl.

He said he'd gotten an assignment from a magazine in New York. He was going to go up to the old hotel and sketch the ruins. His pictures were going to be with an article they were doing. It was a famous old hotel called the Overlook. It burned down ten years ago. The caretaker burned it down. He was crazy. Everybody in town said so. But never mind; he's dead.

When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

In a book, all would have gone according to plan . . . but life was so fucking untidy — what could you say for an existence where some of the most crucial conversations of your life took place when you needed to take a shit, or something? An existence where there weren't even any chapters?

It was like a novel so disgusting you just have to finish it.

In Annie's view all the people in the world were divided into three groups: brats, poor poor things . . . and Annie.