“To his complete astonishment, he later found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that the dog would be protected. It was a moment in which he felt a desperate need to believe in a God that shepherded his own creations. But, even praying, he felt a twinge of self-reproach, and knew he might start mocking his own prayer at any second.Somehow, though, he managed to ignore his iconoclastic self and went on praying anyway. Because he wanted the dog, because he needed the dog.”

“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.”

“Crossing your fingers, Neville? Knocking on wood? He ignored that, beginning to suspect his mind of harboring an alien. Once he might have termed it conscience. Now it was only an annoyance. Morality, after all, had fallen with society. He was his own ethic. Makes a good excuse, doesn’t it, Neville? Oh, shut up.”

“Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. (“Mad House”)”

“Despite everything he had or might have (except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of improvement or even of change. The way things shaped up, he would live out his life with no more than he already had. And how many years was that? Thirty, maybe forty if he didn’t drink himself to death. The thought of forty more years of living as he was made him shudder”

“... 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.”

“But are his needs any more shocking than the needs of any other animals and men? Are his deeds more outrageous than the deeds of the parent who drained the spirit from his child? The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician? Is he worse than the manufacturer who set up belated foundations with the money he made by handing bombs and guns to suicidal nationalists? Is he worse than the distiller who gave bastardized grain juice to stultify further the brains of those who, sober, were incapable of progressive thought? (Nay, I apologize for this calumny; I nip the brew that feeds me.) Is he worse, then, than the publisher who filled ubiquitous racks with lust and death wishes? Really, no, search your soul, lovie--is the vampire so bad?”