“Yeah, apparently this chick didn’t know-“ He held up a hand.“Thank you, but I came to hear your story, not theirs,” he took a bite, chewing and swallowing, “You see, stories are endless; there is always something before the beginning and after the end. They can branch off and follow any character. But because we ourselves can’t see the whole story, we have to cut it up into novellas. You see?”

“Where the frick are you?! I’ve been frickin’ driving all frickin’ around this stupid frickin’ city all frickin’ day trying to find the frickin’ hotel because apparently frickin’ Emily doesn’t know where the frick it is either.”

“Tammy, I hunt mythical monsters for a living. Try me.”

“Tammy, werewulves act in ways that are pleasing only to themselves. They behave without a conscious... They are sick monsters who have permanently lost their self-control. Their intentions and motivations are never clear; they slaughter flocks and herds yet eat nothing. They are the quintessence of evil, hence the title “demon”. And who really wants demons around?”

“No one told me holy water had chlorine in it.”

“Here's an exclusive, Tanner Graham. I love you like crazy.""My favorite kind of story," he said. "I already know how this one ends.""How?""Happily ever after.”

“Stories are masks of God.That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother's Grimm.Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth.Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God.So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.”