A coward judges all he sees by what he is.

I think of fear as a survival function, and in the stories that I write, the only thing that I've tried to do is provide people with nightmares which are really safe places to put those fears for a while because you can say afterwards that uh, that, that well it was all just make-believe anyway, so I just took my emotions for a walk.

Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it's work... Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.

A dimwit thinks nothing is funny unless it's mean.

The wonder is that so many OCDs manage to live productive lives, just the same. They work, they eat (often not enough or too much, it's true), they go to the movies, they make love to their girlfriends and boyfriends, their wives and husbands... and all the time those birds are there, clinging to them and pecking away little bits of flesh.

and the rain went rollin down the windowpanes, and the shadows wiggled n' squiggled on her check and forehead like black veins.

When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, nobody has any idea what you look like inside.