Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they're scared for the fear to become real. Mo was terrified, and now Nick was too.

Sexton: I think the whole world's gone mad. Death: Uh-uh. It's always like this. You probably just don't get out enough.

Take one, and you cannot take the other. But neither path is safe. Which way would you walk — the way of hard truths or the way of fine lies?

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.

It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.

You'll think this is a bit silly, but I'm a bit--well, I have a thing about birds." "What, a phobia?" "Sort of." "Well, that's the common term for an irrational fear of birds." "What do they call a rational fear of birds, then?

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.