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

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.

The message is clear: By all means become an abomination -- but only while unhinged by grief or wrath.

When you're a kid it's people's cruelty that makes you cry, then when you're an adult it's their kindness.

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.

If Im going to invest the time in a novel, I want something more than the entertainment you get out of most genre fiction.

The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it.