“That whiff of smoke was enough to transform my sithere-trembling terror into get-the-hell-out-of-here terror.”

“Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really.”

“A pneumatic toy frog hops onto a lily pad, trembling. Beneath the surface, lies terror.”

“So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.”

“Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign of terror, in the shadow of the guillotine.”

“My thoughts are quiet, but not calm. There is a terror on the edge of the silence, a terror fed by my burning flesh and the stench of death.”