“Those TV pictures had looked like scenes from hell. Flames leaping up into the night. Even so, cattle aren’t people. Just a few months later Jack had turned on the telly once again and called to Ellie to come and look, as people must have been calling out, all over the world, to whoever was in the next room, ‘Drop what you’re doing and come and look at this.”

“Once again Toll-by-Night had burst out of its captivity, like a monstrous jack from an innocent-looking box. And this time Mosca was a part of it.”

“Over the last month I had pulled a woman from a blazing inferno. I had called fire and lighting down on assassins and escaped to safety. I had even killed something that could have been either a dragon or a demon, depending on your point of view. But there in that room was the first time I actually felt like any sort of hero. If you are looking for a reason for the man I would eventually become, if you are looking for a beginning, look there.”

“In the months to come, I would look back on this time in my life almost as a kind of out-of-body travel, from which I had returned with nothing but a sense memory of having been somewhere inexpressibly exciting and far away. It wasn't like a dream, exactly, although it had a dream's strange internal logic. It was like looking through the window of an airplane at night, the way the city below appears so near, yet untouchable beyond the glass--a network of lights, flames, stars.”

“Trent looked me up and down. “Is that all you’re going to do?” My pulse quickened, and I gazed at the front of the basilica where the scratching was coming from. “I might have a snack later if nothing comes through those doors.”

“The neighborhood had gotten really into pastel the last few years. It started when Alfred's wife painted their whole house a soft pink during menopause. Looks Like Linen it was called. People raved. A magazine came, made the family hold up a rotisserie chicken, and then photographed it. A few months later, Mrs. Trenton's house was Mint Leaf. Ours became Celery Powder. The Resnicks' house turned Yellow Feather.”