“Pac-Man?" The beast looked up at me, oversized fangs giving it an expression that straddled the line between deadly and dopey. A string of drool waved pendulum-like from the jaw, pushing it firmly into the latter category. "When he was a puppy, he tried to eat a ghost," Pallas explained.”

“Which reminds me, there's a vampire hand in your freezer's ice maker." Seeing my aghast expression, she added, "Don't worry. I double-bagged it.”

“I like big books and I cannot lie.You other readers can’t denyThat when a kid walks in with The Name of the WindLike a hardbound brick of win.Story bling.Wanna swipe that thingCause you see that boy is speedingRight through the book he’s reading.I’m hooked and I can’t stop pleading.Wanna curl up with that for ages,All thousand pages.Reviewers tried to warn me.But with that plot you hookedMe like Bradley.Ooh, crack that fat spine.You know I wanna make you mine.This book is stella ’cause it ain’t some quick novella.”

“A cop friend downstate had once described what he called the 'pucker effect,' the body's automatic response when something just wasn't right. He wasn't talking about the lips; the puckering happened farther south, and every cop learned to trust that instinct.”

“Smudge continued running laps, flames flickering like tiny orange banners on his back. He was never wrong about danger, but he couldn’t tell you if that danger was a meteorite streaking toward the roof or an amorous moose running amok in the parking lot.”

“A hundred feet underground, in a fake field beneath a fake sky, with an ogre slaughtered like no more than a rat to a cat, and he sends us to search for the unusual.”

“1. Bullying is not okay. Period.2. Freedom of religion does not give you the right to physically or verbally assault people.3. If your sincerely-held religious beliefs require you to bully children, then your beliefs are fucked up.”