Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don't refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it's so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren't especially interested in viewing them as people - just as objects representing their culture.

But when I got angry, my nerves sought an outlet, and my mouth didn't always guard the gates.

...and when I lift my head to scream out my fury, a million stars turn black and die. No one can see them, but they are my tears.

He was dead again when I got home that day. His corpse was in the kitchen, near the counter, where it appeared he'd been chopping vegetables when the urge to stab himself through the wrist had struck. I slipped on the blood coming in, which annoyed me because that meant it was all over the kitchen floor.

If the first words out of your mouth are to cry 'political correctness!', ... chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem.

The shadows of Ina-Karekh are the place where nightmares dwell, but not their source. Never forget: the shadowlands are not elsewhere. We create them. They are within.

Loneliness is a darkness of the soul