Toast was a pointless invention from the Dark Ages. Toast was an implement of torture that caused all those subjected to it to regurgitate in verbal form the sins and crimes of their past lives. Toast was a ritual item devoured by fetishists in the belief that it would enhance their kinetic and sexual powers. Toast cannot be explained by any rational means. Toast is me. I am toast.

Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.

It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.

Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily.

Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.

I used to act in college, but always comedy. Didn't do [William] Shakespeare - did Ben Jonson.

And yes, I know it's you; and that is what we will come to, sooner or later, when it's even darker than it is now, when the snow is colder, when it's darkest and coldest and candles are no longer any use to us and the visibility is zero: yes. It's still you. It's still you.