“I haven't had this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister”

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

“So I had this problem -- work or starve. So I thought I'd combine the two and decided to become a writer.”

“Forget the past, let the dead bury the dead. Things were working out fine, and that was the only thing he had to remember.”

“All at once she could hear the sullen patter of the rain and sense the sigh of the wind behind it. She remembered the sound, because it had rained like that the day Mom was buried, the day they lowered her into that little rectangle of darkness.”

“Henderson sighed. There was a time, he reflected, when the coming of this night meant something. A dark Europe, groaning in superstitious fear, dedicated this Eve to the grinning Unknown. A million doors had once been barred against the evil visitants, a million prayers mumbled, a million candles lit. There was something majestic about the idea, Henderson reflected.”

“I always carry a pistol when I go [to the New York Public Library]. Never did trust those stone lions.”