Gerald's Game Quotes

If anyone ever asks you what panic is, now you can tell them: an emotional blank spot that leaves you feeling as if you've been sucking on a mouthful of pennies.

Sometimes it takes heart to write about a thing, doesn't it? To let that thing out of the room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.

Words had a way of creating their own imperatives.

When all the normal patterns and routines of a person’s life fell apart—and with such shocking suddenness—you had to find something you could hold onto, something that was both sane and predictable.

men were not so much gifted with penises as cursed with them.

Listening to it was like having a mud-slimed piece of silk drawn lightly back and forth across her face.

It was as if the body disdained memory... or refused the responsibility of it.

Some nightmares never completely ended.

Some memories battened onto a person's mind like evil leeches, and certain words could bring them instantly back to squirming, feverish life.

They ought to make it a law that you have to get a license, or at least a learner’s permit, before you’re allowed to talk. Until you pass your Talker’s Test, you should have to be a mute.

Tis all a Checkerboard of Nights and Days Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays: Hither and thither moves, and mates, and stays, And one by one back in the Closet lays.

Oh, what the fuck,' she told the empty house. 'Bring on the night.

Even if things go all wrong they'll work out just fine.

Men still think the same things about us they have always thought, Ruth - I'm sure of it. A lot of them have learned to say the right things at the right times, but as my mother used to say, 'Even a cannibal can learn to recite the Apostles' Creed'.

I want to tell you something else, something I’m really starting to believe: I’m going to be okay. Not today, not tomorrow, and not next week, but eventually. As okay as we mortals are privileged to get, anyway. It’s good to know that—good to know that survival is still an option, and that sometimes it even feels good. That sometimes it actually feels like victory.

Jesus, sometimes I can’t believe how dumb people can be. They ought to make it a law that you have to get a license, or at least a learner’s permit, before you’re allowed to talk. Until you pass your Talker’s Test, you should have to be a mute. It would solve a lot of problems.

People are almost always safe from ghosts and ghouls and the living dead in daylight, and they're usually safe from them at night if they're with others, but when a person is alone in the dark, all bets are off. Men and women alone in the dark are like open doors, Jessie, and if they call out or scream for help, who knows what dread things may answer? Who knows what some men and women have seen in the hour of their solitary deaths? Is it so hard to believe that some of them may have died of fear, no matter what the words on the death certificates say?

What I think is this: Gerald died before he ever had a chance to climb into the saddle, but he fucked me good and proper just the same.

How can things have possibly gotten from there to here? Sorry, folks, but this just has to be a dream. It’s much too absurd for reality.

That slit was the object of every man's lust - the heterosexual ones, at least - but it was frequently an object of their inexplicable scorn, distrust, and hate. You didn't hear that dark anger in all their jokes, but it was present in enough of them, and in some it was right out front, raw as a sore: What's a woman? A life-support system for a cunt .

The truth, first encountered on that day, was this: there was a well inside her, the water in that well was poisoned, and when he goosed her, William had sent a bucket down there, one which had come up filled with scum and squirming gluck.

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays

I’m peeling my hand, she thought. Oh dear Jesus, I’m peeling it like an orange.

Her mind’s constant insistence that it was a mistake was understandable but irrelevant.

Others determined the morality. Others had the hatred. Others turned his work into victories. He did as he was told, expertise his trade mark. The soldier in his army.

She felt a swollen green sac of poison pulsing somewhere inside her -- bitter stuff, hateful as hemlock. She was afraid that if that sac burst, she would choke on her own frustrated rage.

She waited to feel a pang of shame at hitting below the belt like this and was pleased - or maybe it was relief she felt - when no pang came. I guess maybe I'm just tired of pretending she thought.

Le cose cambiano specialmente al buio, affermava, quando una persona è sola. In quella condizione, dalla gabbia che contiene l'immaginazione cadono i lucchetti e allora qualunque cosa può mettersi a circolare liberamente.

La supervivencia no es cuestión de cortesía ni de disculpas.

I don’t want no part of this crazy love.” Right on, Paul. You may be short, but you ain’t dumb.

Such news only served to increase her belief that men were not so much gifted with penises as cursed with them.

And you know what to do next, toots—don’t you? Yes—the time had come to make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here, to make like a library and book.

Some memories battened onto a person’s mind like evil leeches, and certain words—stupid and ridiculous, for example—could bring them instantly back to squirming, feverish life.

nothing cheered up a handcuffed woman more reliably than a little Country Morning Rose Blusher. All the women’s magazines said so.

God? Listen a minute, would You? I need some help here, I really do. I’m in a mess and I’m terrified. Please help me get out of this, okay? I . . . um . . . I pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

los sueños son como capullos de polilla vacíos o como abiertas vainas de algodón, cáscaras muertas en cuyo interior la vida aleteó fugazmente, animada por un furioso pero frágil vendaval de energía.

She shouldn't be thinking this way; it brought the panic-thing closer. If she didn't get her mind out of this rut, she would soon see the panic-thing's stupid, terrified eyes. No, she absolutely shouldn't be thinking this way. The bitch of it was, once you got started, it was very hard to stop again.

The book was called But Even So, and the poem had gone like this: “Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we’d be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?

The light dawned, then, Ruth. I suddenly understood that all of them—all the men investigating what had happened out at the lake—had made certain assumptions about how I’d handled the situation and why I’d done the things I’d done. Most of them worked in my favor, and that certainly simplified things, but there was still something both infuriating and a little spooky in the realization that they drew most of their conclusions not from what I’d said or from any evidence they’d found in the house, but only from the fact that I’m a woman, and women can be expected to behave in certain predictable ways.

It had all been a little too bright to be real, like things seen through a fever which is not quite high enough to be life-threatening. In fact, those first two years had been a blast. The blast had ended with that first meeting of the women’s consciousness group. In there, Jessie had discovered a ghastly gray world which seemed simultaneously to preview the adult future that lay ahead for her in the eighties and to whisper of gloomy childhood secrets that had been buried alive in the sixties . . . but did not lie quiet there.

could come to believe I had been wrong . . . but if I succeeded in doing that, my life would be ruined.

But how did you tell your husband of almost twenty years that every time he grinned he looked as if he were suffering from light mental retardation?

Yes – the time had come to make like a hockey player and get the puck out of here, to make like a library and book.

But remember this: even if things go all wrong - they’ll work out just fine.

Vivo en un mundo en el que han cambiado todas las perspectivas.

but helpless pieces of the game he plays Upon this chequer-board of nights and days Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays

Of course she had gotten a lot of advice like that in the course of her lifetime (advice most often ascribed to that mysterious, ubiquitous group known as “they”),

things changed in the dark. Things especially changed in the dark, it said, when a person was alone. When that happened, the locks fell off the cage which held the imagination, and anything—any things—might be set free.

You are playing it already! Making guesses of who to trust, and who trusts you. Who knows what? Who is hiding behind which mask? You are playing the traitor's game, and no matter how well one wins, even the winner loses in the end." -Gerald

Bei Tage sind die Menschen fast sicher vor Geistern und Ghulen und den lebenden Toten, und sie sind normalerweise auch bei Nacht vor ihnen sicher, wenn sie mit anderen zusammen sind, aber wenn jemand allein im Dunkeln ist, ist alles möglich.

Bullseye. The problem wasn’t Gerald, or the chair, or what the Rescue Services guys might think when they got down here and saw the situation. It wasn’t even the question of the telephone. The problem was the space cowboy; her old friend Dr. Doom.

How many of the choices she had made since that day had been directly or indirectly influenced by what had happened during the final minute or so she had spent on her Daddy’s lap, looking at a vast round mole in the sky through two or three pieces of smoked glass?

Then why did I have to go through the rest of that awful old stuff? The answer to that was pretty obvious, she supposed. It didn’t matter if you wanted one sardine or twenty, you still had to open the can and look at all of them; you had to smell that horrible fish-oil stink.

was—you could slap on a little Hot Tuna or MC5. It had all been a little too bright to be real, like things seen through a fever which is not quite high enough to be life-threatening. In fact, those first two years had been a blast. The blast had ended with that first meeting of the women’s consciousness group. In there, Jessie had discovered a ghastly gray world which seemed simultaneously to preview the adult future that lay ahead for her in the eighties and to whisper of gloomy childhood secrets that had been buried alive in the sixties . . . but did not lie quiet there.

Quasi sempre alla luce del giorno la gente è al sicuro da spettri e mostri e morti viventi e ne è normalmente al sicuro di notte, quando si è in compagnia di altre persone, ma quando si è soli nel buio, non c'è più niente da fare. Uomini e donne soli nel buio sono come porte aperte, Jessie, e se gridano o invocano aiuto, chi sa quali orribili creature risponderanno? Chi sa che cosa hanno visto certi uomini e certe donne nell'ora della loro morte solitaria? È così difficile credere che alcuni di loro siano morti di paura, quali che siano le parole scritte sui loro certificati di decesso?

Nu era greu de înţeles. Când îţi sunt distruse toate tabieturile şi când viaţa obişnuită îţi devine o grămadă de moloz mirosind a urină de câine, trebuie să te agăţi de ceva. De ceva care să mai păstreze o urmă de logică. Şi dacă nu găseşti nimic altceva care să te împiedice să îţi pierzi minţile, în afara desenelor sângerii de pe mătasea pleoapelor şi a ultimei raze de soare dintr-o zi de octombrie, agaţă-te de ele şi fii recunoscătoare. Pentru că, dacă nu eşti în stare să găseşti ceva care să aibă sens, atunci lipsa totală de logică a noii ordini a lumii te va arunca în prăpastia nebuniei.

All I had to do was cry. In a way it makes me feel unbelievably sleazy to write that, but in another way it does not; in another way I recognize it as just another symptom of what’s wrong between the fellers and the girls in this particular square-dance. He didn’t entirely believe I was serious until I started to cry, you see.

That was when the carnival ended for Jessie Mahout. Ended? No, that wasn’t right. It was as if she had been afforded a momentary glimpse behind the carnival; had been allowed to see the gray and empty fields of autumn that were the real truth: nothing but empty cigarette wrappers and used condoms and a few cheap broken prizes caught in the tall grass, waiting to either blow away or be covered by the winter snows.

Her mother sounded angrily amused, a combination that made Jessie’s head spin. It seemed to her that only adults could combine emotions in so many daffy ways - if feelings were food, adult feelings would be things like chocolate-covered steak, mashed potatoes with pineapple bits, Special K with chili powder sprinkled on it instead of sugar. Jessie thought that being an adult seemed more like a punishment than a reward.

Somewhere along the lake—farther off today, by the sound—the chainsaw started up, and that made her even angrier. The guy from yesterday, back for more. Just some swinging dick in a red-and-black-checked flannel shirt from L. L. Bean’s, out there playing Paul Kiss-My-Ass Bunyan, roaring away with his Stihl and dreaming about crawling into bed with his little honey at the end of the day . . . or maybe it was football he was dreaming of, or just a few frosty cold ones down at the marina bar. Jessie saw the dork in the checked flannel shirt as clearly as she had seen the young girl in the stocks, and if thoughts alone could have killed him,

Besides, finding out something like that would have killed my mother." And then Jessie had known she was going to explode if she didn't get out of there. So she had gotten up, springing out of her chair so fast she had almost knocked the ugly, bulky thing over. She had sprinted from the room, knowing they were all looking at her, not caring. What they thought didn't matter. What mattered was that the sun had gone out, the very sun itself, and if she told, her story would be disbelieved only if God was good. If God was in a bad mood, Jessie would be believed... and even if it didn't kill her mother, it would blow the family apart like a stick of dynamite in a rotten pumpkin.

Suddenly she felt someone- Most likely the Good wife, and boy, had she ever underestimated the intestinal fortitude of that lady- running for the switches which governed the circuit-breakers in her head. Goody had seen tendrils of smoke starting to seep out through the cracks in the closed doors of those panels, had understood what they meant, and was making a final, desperate effort to shut down the machinery before the motors overheated and the bearings froze. there was an intolerably bright flash inside her head and then the lights went out. She did not faint prettily, like the heroine of a florid stage play, but was snapped brutally backward like a condemned murderer who has been strapped into the hotseat and has just gotten his first jolt of juice.

A luz dourada - agora quase uma luz crepuscular - ofuscou-a e ela tornou a fechar os olhos, reparando que ocorriam fluxos e refluxos, vermelhos e pretos, à medida que o coração bombeava sangue em suas pálpebras cerradas. Decorridos alguns instantes, notou que os mesmos padrões dardejantes se repetiam indefinidamente. Era quase o mesmo que observar protozoários ao microscópio, protozoários numa lâmina tinta de vermelho. Achou esse padrão que se repetia tanto curioso quanto calmante. Supunha que não era preciso ser gênio, para compreender a atração que essas formas repetitivas exerciam em determinadas circunstâncias. Quando todos os padrões e rotinas normais da vida desmoronaram - e com chocante subitaneidade - era preciso encontrar alguma coisa a que se agarrar, alguma coisa normal e previsível. Se o espiralamento regular do sangue nas camadas finas da pele, que protegiam os olhos dos últimos raios de sol de um dia de outubro, era a única opção que havia, então a pessoa a aceitava e dizia muitíssimo obrigada. Porque se não conseguisse encontrar alguma coisa a que se agarrar, alguma coisa que fizesse algum sentido, os elementos desconhecidos da nova ordem mundial poderiam levá-la à loucura.

dramatically INCREASED the amount of absentee and mail-in ballots in the battleground states [while] Prong Two dramatically DECREASED the level of scrutiny of such ballots—effectively taking the election “cops” off the beat. This pincer movement resulted in a FLOOD of illegal ballots into the battleground states which was more than sufficient to tip the scales from a decisive legal win by President Trump to a narrow and illegitimate alleged “victory” by Joe Biden.7 In a landmark Time magazine cover story by Molly Ball, the Democrats have all but confessed to this Grand Stuff the Ballot Box Strategy. And Molly Ball is neither a right-wing hack nor a Fourth Estate slouch; she was the 2019 winner of the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency. In her “kiss and tell” article, Ball highlighted a long list of operatives who have openly boasted about how they gamed America’s election system to overthrow a sitting president. That she portrayed these smug zealots as saviors of the election rather than as thieves is yet another Big Reveal—not just of Ball’s own Progressive ideology but also of the much deeper rot eating away at our election system and our broader Republic. In this Big Reveal, we bare stark witness to an “ends justify the means” mentality that has gripped far too many Americans on the left. As Corey Lewandowski once put it, these Machiavellian cadres apparently hate Donald Trump more than they love their country.8 Memo number one to Molly’s Merry Band of Democrat Thieves: Destroying the integrity of our election system to topple a sitting president you loathe is no Devil’s bargain. It’s national suicide.

Joe showed me his neat kennels and his complement of Labradors, and I met Mr and Mrs Fettle, the elderly couple who looked after the daily management. Joe seemed to have plenty of time to spare. ‘But,’ he said with a sideways glance, ‘you can fully train a Labrador while a spaniel’s still scratching itself.’ He was waiting for me to point out that the Labrador, being a retriever and therefore expected to do no more than wait beside his master until there was quarry to be fetched, had little to learn beyond what a puppy did naturally, while a spaniel had to hunt without chasing, distinguish wounded game from that which was sitting tight and resist the constant temptation to chase. There was even a vestige of truth in what he said. Because of their eagerness and sheer joie de vivre, spaniels can be hard work.

To oversimplify, we overwhelmingly search out opportunities to play Stag Hunts rather than outsmart each other in Prisoner's Dilemmas.

It might be wondered whether any specific weighting type was crucial in producing convergence, but under this same population, any three of the weighting systems (again, randomly assigned) resulted in fixation on R2, giving some reason to believe that the convergence dynamic is not driven by specific types. Moreover, it was typically the case that a more diverse assortment of weighting types (all four) produced convergence quicker than populations with less diversity. Combinations of types certainly can have an effect; omitting the Highly Conditional Cooperators, for example, slowed down convergence. This is interesting. In many ways, Highly Conditional Cooperators seem an impediment to moral convergence. They can be understood as viewing moral action as a Stag Hunt or Assurance Game, in which most other must play 'Act Morally' before they do. One might expect them to play the 'risk dominant' equilibrium. But as part of a social process, they can perform a critical role, spurring the completion of convergence, preventing it from 'sputtering out.

They don’t shoot ground game in his neck of the woods and the last thing he wanted was a dog which would take off after a gopher or a squirrel. And he said that bum-punching quail over pointers was no more interesting than shooting clays down-the-line – the same going-away bird every time.

I have an idea that very few careless people ever manage to slide out of the devil’s hand.

I've only come to realize lately how often and how much we are moved by others, even when we are priding ourselves on our control and self-reliance...I'm going to be okay. Not today, not tomorrow, and not next week, but eventually. As okay as we mortals are privileged to get, anyway. It's good to know that - good to know that survival is still an option, and that sometimes it even feels good. That sometimes it actually feels like victory.

People are almost always safe from ghosts and ghouls and the living dead in daylight, and they're usually safe from them at night if they're with others, but when a person is alone in the dark, all bets are off.

Kafasının içerisinde bazı sesler duyardı hep. Başkalarının da duyduklarını sanıyordu. Ama insanlar genellikle bundan söz etmezlerdi. Bağırsaklarının çalışmasından söz etmedikleri gibi. Bu seslerden çoğu eski dostlardı. Hepsi de terlikler kadar rahattılar.

Merhametin, felaketten sonra pek ucuz bir şey olduğunu öğrenmişti

He heard something. I heard it too. Something larger than a squirrel and this is the Stephen King book Gerald’s Game and unlike Gerald’s wife, whose husband was dead and bad, I have someone to live for: you.

The Spanish economic system is like a game of musical chairs, in which there are only half as many seats as there are performers.

Every year millions of American men buy televisions in order to watch football. The various companies that produce TVs are aware of this, and try to run advertisements for their contraptions that feature games. Unfortunately, the NFL only sells footage to its official television company. That means if, say, Zenith is the NFL’s TV of choice, Panasonic, Sony, and myriad other entities can’t use league action. “So every year—every single year—I get calls from the companies, wanting to purchase USFL stock footage,” Cohen said. “I averaged about $100,000 a year for a long time. Dom was right.” Don’t blink, or you might miss ubiquitous snippets of USFL game footage. That game Julie Taylor was watching in the student lounge on Friday Night Lights? Blitz-Bandits at Tampa Stadium. The “Bubble Bowl” game in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode “Band Geeks”? Bandits-Showboats at the Liberty Bowl. A Scientology advertisement stars Anthony Carter scoring a touchdown for the Panthers; Russ Feingold, a United States senator running for reelection in 2010, ran a spot with Gamblers receivers Clarence Verdin and Gerald McNeil dancing in the end zone;

It’s hard on Mom, though, a nurse’s aid at a nursing home, taking care of old people all day and then coming home to Gramps, who lately has been having trouble remembering our names.

A girl named Brittany or Ashley would have fallen in love with the spandex costumes and the white skates of a figure skater, but when your name is Joanna and everyone calls you Jo, you grow up in Cleveland watching your older brother play hockey in the shadows of the steel mills and dream of the day when you can wear a jersey and carry a stick, waiting for your chance to slap that puck home.

I’d rather kiss Derek’s padded butt than leave the ice right now with everyone thinking it’s too rough out here for a seventh-grade girl.

Maybe it’s the taste of blood in my mouth or how angry I am at Derek, but I turn to Ben, slapping my stick on the ice. “Screw him,” I say. “I’m making this team.

Now I’ll deal with Derek on the ice and Valerie off. At least in the rink, I carry a stick and have pads and a helmet for protection. I’m pretty sure that Valerie’s attacks will make me look forward to Derek’s cheap shots against the boards.

I don’t care that I’m the only girl out here or the smallest player. I don’t care that some people think I shouldn’t be here, but I do care that the drills have stopped and my potential teammates are staring at me now like I’m roadkill.