“I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day. Whoever I had become had to die.”

“Whatever happened after, even the loss, my life would be less if I had not had that. On the day I die, my only regret would be if I hadn't had it. If I had been too much a coward to take it while I had a chance.”

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”

“I melted into the dream as if I had always been there. I knew where I had come from; I knew where I was going.”

“The wickedness of the world was a part of creation, I knew this, and the Angel of Death had been created on that day when life first appeared, yet i was embittered, I wept for what i had lost and what the world had lost and would yet lose again.”

“Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained.But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.”