“There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightnings slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world”

“The written word might as well have been my veins, and ink my blood.”

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.”

“Lie there panning, looking, all ribs and elbows and dilated eyes. The awake floor is littered with gear and dirty clothes, blond hardwood with sealed seams, two throw-rugs, the bare waxed wood shiny in the windows' snowlight, the floor neutral, faceless, you cannot see any face in the floor, awake, lying there, faceless, blank, dilated, playing beam over floor again and again, not sure all night forever unsure you're not missing something that's right there: you lie there, awake and almost twelve, believing with all your might.”

“These day's I like to imagine that if a man were to enter through the slash on the book's cover, as if it were a door, he could walk right into the heart of the Inferno.”

“Our talk had been serious and sober,But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -For we knew not the month was October,And we marked not the night of the year -(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)We noted not the dim lake of Auber -(Though once we had journeyed down here) -Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.”