Books had shown me, however, that all people everywhere wanted their lives to have purpose and meaning. This longing was universal.

Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reigns.

Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image

In real life during the last decade of the twentieth century, Rumpelstiltskin would probably get the queen's daughter. He would no doubt addict her to heroin, turn her out as a prostitute, confiscate her earnings, beat her for pleasure, hack her to pieces, and escape justice by claiming that society's intolerance for bad-tempered, evil-minded trolls had driven him temporarily insane.

Thanks to the circus between my ears, I can seize upon the smallest disquieting observation and from it extrapolate a terror of cataclysmic proportions.

A short-order cook, just off work, makes easy tracking for lions and worse

It will all be better in the end and if it is not better then it must not be the end yet