“And that's all it takes to make you happy? You kill little kids, then go home and wait until it's time to do it all again? What the hell kind of existence is that?”

“There are all kinds of things that can scare you every day. What if someone you know gets cancer? What if something happens to you sister or your friends or your parents? And what if you get hit by a car crossing the street or the kids at school find out what an unnatural freak you are and what if you go too far out in the lake and the water is over your head and what if there's a fire or a war?And you can lie awake at night and worry about these things because it's scary and unpredictable, but it's REAL. It's possible."-Mackie Doyle, The Replacement”

“Sometimes this was just the way the game ended. Sometimes you did your best, and it all went straight to hell anyway.”

“Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people’s misery. They lie when it suits them and don’t see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don’t have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person.”

“All great acts are ruled by intention. What you mean is what you get.”

“Tender," she said again. "Tender is kind and gentle. It's also sore, like the skin around an injury.”

“The way Lillian says it is hungry, like she’s waiting for something to be revealed, and I wonder if maybe that’s the real difference between us—that when she pulls back the curtain and stares into the blackness behind it, it’s just one more way of testing herself. Like some game you can never win, because even if you face all the shocking realities and the horrors of the world, once you’ve seen that kind of awfulness, you can never un-see it. You have to carry it around with you forever.”