Nothing holds love together like shared vice or collusive perversion.

I'm an American. We're a people diseased with progress.

Nicotine and alcohol embraced in my system like long-parted siblings, grateful to me for reuniting them.

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured price. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath.

Literature is humanity's broad-minded alter-ego, with room in its heart for monsters, even for you. It's humanity without the judgement.

When I see gurgling retarded children (that's God's doing, by the way, not mine) happily styling their hair with their own stinking mards, I think of Adam in those pre-marital days. I know he's your great-to-the-nth-degree-granddad and all - but I'm afraid he was rather an imbecile.

You can't blame me. I mean that literally. You're incapable of blaming me. You're human. Being human is choosing freedom over imprisonment, autonomy over dependency, liberty over servitude. You can't blame me because you know (come on, man, you've always known) that the idea of spending eternity with nothing to do except praise God is utterly unappealing. You'd be catatonic after an hour. Heaven's a swiz because to get in you have to leave yourself outside. You can't blame me because -- now do please be honest with yourself for once -- you'd have left, too.