“We fight monsters and unholy creatures for a living here. Grotesque, evil, violent, dangerous; they’re certainly all these things. And yet, we somehow manage to go to sleep each night and wake up each morning. The terror wears off. What was horrific becomes mundane. We lose ourselves to a numbed normalcy after a while, a self-inflicted detachment. You forget how you got here, what it was like before. And then someone comes along, someone new, someone who sees it all with fresh eyes, and it snaps you out of your daily coma, reminding you of what you’ve forgotten. Of what you’ve become.”

“Telling someone like my mother that Hell is a real, physical place, somewhere you can travel to and from, would be like spray-painting the statue of Jesus hanging over the pulpit during mass. Better off telling her the Pope is gay.”

“We have nothing left. Orphans. Castaways." She turns to me. "Childless. That is what we are. The unwanted or the un-killed. Weare together only by the wrongs done to us. There is no-one else to worry about us, to fear for our safety, or to give us comfort.”

“Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”

“Look, I didn’t ask for any of this, but I’m here now. I get that it’s dangerous. I get that I’m fat. I get that I’m about as far from prepared for this insanity as you can get. But I’ll tell you something about me: I don’t quit. So enough with the let’s-scare-the-fat-girl routine, okay?”

“Down every hall is a gruesome tangle of impossible creatures, and every one of them is split open or strung with barbs or dragging their insides after them, flailing along on shattered limbs or shredded wings or blasted stumps. I’ve got the pistol, half a can of spray and a handful of useless shotgun slugs. I’m dead.”

“I know you think I should be home taking care of my family. That maybe I’d be distracted or I wouldn’t be as committed as the rest of you, but who’s more committed: the person with something to lose, or the people who’ve got nothing left?”