He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.

How would you feel about life if Death was your older sister?

Writing's a lot like cooking. Sometimes the cake won't rise, no matter what you do, and every now and again the cake tastes better than you ever could have dreamed it would.

Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to himself, or told to others. Every little hurt, and all the great hurts. Each one was pulled out of him, detail by detail, inch by inch. The demon stripped away the cover of forgetfulness, stripped everything down to truth, and it hurt more than anything.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

She really was pretty, for a grown-up person, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identify to her for the asking, as my father did.

I am anti-life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds…of everything. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?" "I am hope.