Touched by her fingers, the two surviving chocolate people copulate desperately, losing themselves in a melting frenzy of lust, spending the last of their brief borrowed lives in a spasm of raspberry cream and fear.

With American Gods I was trying very, very consciously - there was a level at which it was a little like trying to write a novel in French - you know, "this novel is to be written in American."

I love mythic stuff. I love playing with gods, I love playing with myths. A lot of it has to do with that they're the basic places stories come from. They're the clay that you make the bricks out of.

Partly because I get such astonishingly nice fans.

I don't know. I had to be something, didn't I?

Any way, death is so final, isn't it? "Is it?" asked Richard. "Sometimes," said the marquis de Carabas. And they went down.

You shine like a beacon in a dark world.