“In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle, and he realized it now, understood it at long last. And understanding it seemed to give him a sort of quiet peace, a sense of having spread all the cards on his mental table, examined them, and settled conclusively on the desired hand.”

“In a world of monotonous horrorthere could be no salvation in wild dreaming.”

“... And suddenly he thought, I'm the abnormal one now. Normalcy was amajority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of justone man.Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces --awe, fear, shrinking horror -- and he knew that they were afraid ofhim. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, ascourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He wasan invisible spectre who had left for evidence of his existence thebloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they feltand did not hate them. His right hand tightened on the tiny envelopeof pills. So long as the end did not come with violence, so long as itdid not have to be a butchery before their eyes...Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew hedid not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he wasanathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the conceptcame, amusing to him even in his pain.A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against thewall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while thefinal lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born indeath, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress offorever.I am legend.”

“For him the word 'horror' had become obsolete.”

“But it was hard to keep his hands still. He could almost feel them twitching emphatically with his strong desire to reach out and stroke the dog's head. He had such a terrible yearning to love something again, and the dog was such a beautiful ugly dog.”

“How shall I typify what happened? Passion play? Somewhat. Weird tale? Indubitably. Horror story? Pretty close. Grotesque melodrama? Certainly. Black comedy? Your point of view will determine that. Perhaps it was a combination of them all... So, to the story. A chronicle of greed and cruelty, horror and rapacity, sadism and murder. Love, American style.”

“In less than an hour I have to hold class for a group of idiot freshmen. And, on a desk in the living room, is a mountain of midterm examinations with essays I must suffer through, feeling my stomach turn at their paucity of intelligence, their adolescent phraseology. And all that tripe, all those miles of hideous prose, had been would into an eternal skein in his head. And there it sat unraveling into his own writing until he wondered if he could stand the thought of living anymore. I have digested the worst, he thought. Is it any wonder that I exude it piecemeal? (“Mad House”)”