Seeking the bubble reputation,
I have finished The Stand, by Stephen King, and want to post a few excerpts from the book that I've found particularly enlightening.
"Abagail Freemantle was her name, born in 1882 and with the birth certificate to prove it. [...] She was old. She wanted to rest and enjoy the cycle of the seasons between now and whenever God got tired of watching her make her daily round and decided to call her home to Glory.l But what happened when you questioned God? The answer you got was I Am, Who I AM, and that was the end. When His own Son prayed that the cup be taken from His lips, God never even answered... and she wasn't up to that snuff, no how, no way. Just an ordinary sinner was all she was, and at night when the wind came up and blew through the corn it frightened her to think that God had looked down at the little baby girl poker out between her mother's legs in early 1882 and had said to Himself: I got to keep her around a goodish time. She's got work in 1990, on the other side of a whole heap of calendar pages."
- Chptr. 45, The Stand by Stephen King (Mother Abagail Freemantle P.O.V.)
"'Nick, all things serve the Lord. Don't you think this black man serves Him, too? He does, no matter how mysterious HIs purpose may be. THe black man will follow you no matter when you run, because he serves the purpose of God, and God wants you to treat with him. It don't do no good to run from the will of the Lord God of Hosts. A man or woman who tries that only ends up in the belly of the beast.'
Nick wrote briefly. Ralph studied the note, rubbed the side of his nose, and wished he didn't have to read it. Old ladies like this didn't cotton to stuff like what Nick had just written. She'd likely call it a blasphemy, and shout it loud enough to wake everyone in their places, too.
'What's he say?' Abagail asked.
'He says...' Ralph cleared his throat; the feather stuck in the band of his hat jiggled. 'He says that he doesn't believe in God.' The message relayed, he looked unhappily down at his shoes and waited for the explosion.
But she only chuckled, got up, and walked across to Nick. She took one of his hands and patted it. 'Bless you, Nick, but that doesn't matter. He believes in you.'"
- Chptr. 45, The Stand by Stephen King (Mother Abagail Freemantle P.O.V.)
"She guessed behind the conscious evil there was an unconscious blackness. That was what distinguished the earth's children of darkness; they couldn't make things but only break them. God the Creator had made man in His own image, and that meant that every man and woman who dwelt under God's light was a creator of some kind, a person with an urge to stretch out his hand and shape the world into some rational pattern. The black man wanted - was able - only to unshape. Anti-Christ? You might as well say anti-creation."
- Chptr. 50, The Stand by Stephen King (Mother Abagail Freemantle P.O.V.)
"The Free Zone Committee was full of bright ideas, he thought with contempt. The committee would be just fine... as long as they had good old Harold Lauder to make sure their shoelaces were tied, of course. Good old Harold's good enough for that, but not quite good enough to serve on their fucking Permanent Committee. Heavens, no. He had never been quite good enough, not even quite good enough to get a date for the Class Dance at Ogunquit High SChool, even with a scag. Good God, no, not Harold. Let's remember, folks, when we get right down to the proverbial place where the ursine mammal evacuated his bowels in the buckwheat, that this is no analytical, logical matter, not even a matter of common sense. When we get right down to it, what we end up with is a frigging beauty contest."
- Chptr. 54, The Stand by Stephen King (Harold Emery Lauder P.O.V.)
"All any of us can buy is time, Stu thought. Peters lifetime, his children's lifetimes, maybe the lifetimes of my great-grandchidlren. Until the year 2100 maybe, surely no longer than that. Maybe not that long. Time enough for poor old Mother Earth to recycle herself a little. A season of rest.
'What?' she asked, and he realized he had murmured it aloud.
'A season of rest," he repeated.
'What does that mean?'
'Everything,' he said, and took her hand.
Looking down at Peter he thought: Maybe if we tell him what happened, he'll tell his own children. Warn them. Dear children, the toys are death - they're flashburns and radiation sickness and black, choking plague. These toys are dangerous; the devil in men's brains guided the hands of God when they were made. Don't play with these toys, dear children, please, not ever. Not ever again. Please... please learn the lesson. Let this empty world be your copybook.
'Frannie,' he said, and turned her around so he could look into her eyes.
'What, Stuart?'
'Do you think... do you think people ever learn anything?'
She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, fell silent. The kerosene lamp flickered. Her eyes seemed very blue.
'I don't know,' she said at last. She seemed unpleased with her answer; she struggled to say something more; to illuminate her first response; and could only say it again:
I don't know."
- Chptr. 77, The Stand by Stephen King (Stuart Redman P.O.V.)
"Well, it would come in time. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor Akron, Ohio, for that matter. And the place didn't matter.
The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there... and still on your feet."
- Epilogue, The Stand by Stephen King (Russell Faraday, A.K.A. Randall Flagg, P.O.V.)
"Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long.
And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again."
- Epilogue, The Stand by Stephen King (Russell Faraday, A.K.A. Randall Flagg, P.O.V.)
- As Always -
Tucker