Terrifying. . . . A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It's the kind of book that's impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list.

Why does everyone think that I am a cruel and insensitive man? I mean, come on, I have kids... on my desk in little jars!

The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.

He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.

If you were a real fascistic society and you had a vocal minority that was shouting, "Stop this, stop that, stop the other thing," what you would say is, "Let's give them all the drugs they want." In a lot of states, something very much like that happened. They lowered the drinking age to eighteen and said, "Get juiced."

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

In many ways, Eulah-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism. After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors.