. . . And so Charlie Asher . . . led an army of fourteen-inch-tall bundles of animal bits, armed with everything from knitting needles to a spork, into the storm sewers of San Fransciso.

Mr. Fresh looked up. "The book says if we don't do our jobs everything could go dark, become like the Underworld. I don't know what the Underworld is like, Mr. Asher, but I've caught some of the road show from there a couple of times, and I'm not interested in finding out. How 'bout you?" "Maybe it's Oakland," Charlie said. "What's Oakland?" "The Underworld." "Oakland is not the Underworld!" "The Tenderloin?" Charlie suggested.

I fear you may become a lonely man, even in the company of others.

The gourney, the big file drawers of the dead, the instruments of dissection - this sure looked like the morgues in the movies. Something had gone seriously wrong while she slept.

I am convinced by the events of the last few weeks that nefarious forces of people--unidentified but no less real--are threatening life as we know it, and in fact, may be bent on unraveling the very fabric of our existence.

Don't be ridiculous, Charlie, people love the parents who beat their kids in department stores. It's the ones who just let their kids wreak havoc that everybody hates.

Nothing evokes the prurient like puritanism.