Music [is] the third rail of life. You grabbed it to shock yourself out of the dull drag of hours. To feel something. To burn with all the emotions you didn't get to experience in the ordinary run of school, TV, and loading the dishwasher after dinner.

Terror is the desire to save your own ass, but horror is rooted in sympathy.

The blood of a redheaded woman is three degrees cooler than the blood of a normal woman. This has been established by medical studies.

There's only room for one hero in this story-and everyone knows the devil doesn't get to be the good guy.

Gold don't come off. What's good stays good no matter how much of a beating it takes.

The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.

Already, though, she understood the difference between being a child and being an adult. The difference is when someone says he can keep the bad things away, a child believes him.