The writer's original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader's.

Lovecraft opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me

For," I said, "a murdered man or woman dies not in God's time, but in Man's. He... or she... is cut short before he... or she... can atone for sin, and so all errors must be forgiven. When you think of it that way, all murderers are a gateway for heaven.

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up

Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.

Time is a face on the water.

I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer.