It had that comfortably sprung, lived-in look that library books with a lively circulation always get; bent page corners, a dab of mustard on page 331, a whiff of some reader's spilled after-dinner whiskey on page 468. Only library books speak with such wordless eloquence of the power good stories hold over us, how good stories abide, unchanged and mutely wise, while we poor humans grow older and slower.

The bad ideas kind of just drop out of the mix. You forget about them. The good ones stick around.

Do you believe in an afterlife?" the gunslinger asked him as Brown dropped three ears of hot corn onto his plate. Brown nodded. "I think this is it.

If I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross out. I'm not proud.

Lightning flashed dully inside the clouds on the horizon making them look as if they had fireflies of their own, monster fireflies the size of dinosaurs.

I realized the shells were talking in a voice I recognized. I should have; it was my own. Had I always known that? I suppose I had. On some level, unless we're mad, I think most of us know the various voices of our own imaginations. And of our memories, of course. They have voices, too. Ask anyone who has ever lost a limb or a child or a long-cherished dream. Ask anyone who blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly red). Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark.

The poets continually and sometimes wilfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer.