Horror was rooted in sympathy . . . in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.

I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherfucker.

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.

She liked things that had been written by people who had lived short, ugly, and tragic lives. Or, who at least, were English.

Don't ever have children, Tyler, unless you're ready to be afraid everyday for the rest of your life.

A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.

The soul is an irrational, indivisible equation that perfectly expresses one thing: you. The soul would be no good to the devil if it could be destroyed. And it is not lost when placed in Satan's care, as is so often said. He always know exactly how to put his finger on it.