“The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist's inner eyeballs. ”

“At an age when most children are playing hopscotch or with their dolls,you, poor child, who had no friends or toys, you toyed with dreams of murder, because that is a game to play alone.”

“To preserve the silence within--amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens--no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.”

“I smile because there are tiny dreams that play hopscotch at the corners of my mouth, and every time I breathe they float and every time I laugh they fly kites.”

“The dark organ music filled the Department of Post-Mortem Communications. Moist assumed it was all part of the ambience, although the mood would have been more precisely obtained if the tune it was playing did not appear to be Cantate and Fugue for someone Who Has Trouble with the Pedals.”

“I opened both eyes. Dread was sitting on my chest as if it were an animal. I mean, dread so real it had physical presence, like a Labrador retriever I could teach tricks to. Here, Dread. Sit, Dread. Roll over, Dread. Play dead, Dread.”