The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass.

Some mysteries are simply irresistible,” she said. “They have components that alter a life.

What if I could give you your life back; pluck out the pain; and give you a world of unimaginable beauty that would be for all time.

But I still did not realize how mad she was, and how accustomed to dreaming; and that she would not cry out for reality, rather would feed reality to her dreams, a demon elf feeding her spinning wheel with the reeds of the world so she might make her own weblike universe.

I tell you, we would be hard put to determine what is more evil -- religion or the pure idea. The intervention of the supernatural or the elegant abstract solution! Both have bathed this earth in suffering; both have brought the human race literally and figuratively to its knees.

Claudia... you've been a very very naughty little girl.

He had never expected death to be this quiet, this secretive, this easy.