What was life worth, anyway, if you had to sit around remembering not to mention this, that, and the other thing because someone else might be upset?

There are vampires and vampires, and not all of them suck blood.

Better freedom and a chilly road than a warm hearth and servitude.

Things are different from what I thought. They're much worse.

The gods spend the wealth the universe gathers, they scan the wonders and fling them to nothingness. That's why they're the gods! I told you they were devils.

The result is ... that there's no room left in the world for the weird – though plenty for crude, contemptuous, wisecracking, fun-poking imitations of it.

The right to take a chance, the right to suffer. The right to be unwise, the right to die. These aims are hateful to the government, which values ever frightened mouse and falling sparrow as equal to a tiger burning bright.