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.

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

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

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

Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.

Only meaning can make a difference and we all know there's no meaning. All stories express a desire for meaning, not meaning itself. Therefore any difference knowing the story makes is a delusion.

Snow makes cities innocent again, reveals the frailty of the human gesture against the void.