“No, there are no special places in hell. Hell is a democracy.”

“They used to call the devil the father of lies. But for someone whose sin is meant to be pride, you'd think that lying would leave something of a sour taste. So my theory is that when the devil wants to get something out of you, he doesn't lie at all. He tells you the exact, literal truth. And he lets you find your own way to hell.”

“When a book is read an irrevocable thing happens — a murder, followed by an imposture. The story in the mind murders the story on the page, and takes its place.”

“Could it hurt to take a look? The answer was yes, of course. It's always yes. But I went anyway.”

“The light of a hunter's moon bleached the unresisting pastels from the faces of the towers, so that they looked like titanic ribs of bone, and shadows accrued like crusted blood under the walkways.”

“Stifling an obscene oath, I went back up the steps at a run, but I was locking the stable when the horse was already at the airport with a false passport.”

“Those heart-hammering nightmares that start to lose coherence even as you're waking up from them, but that still manage to leave their moldering fingerprints all across your day.”