Holy men tell us life is a mystery. They embrace that concept happily. But some mysteries bite and bark and come to get you in the dark.

Even if God exists, does He know that you do?

Although I've said a million times that I'm not a horror writer, I do like horror.

Or maybe they were just doing it for fun. A lark. Their religion is tolerant of extreme forms of recreation. Boys will be boys, after all, and sociopathic boys will be sociopathic.

Home is the first refuge from - and last defense against - the disappointments and the terrors of life.

Every human being has appetites difficult to control but far fewer have humility, gentleness, and an awareness of their weaknesses.

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.