My friend wants to get moving and so do I,' Eddie said. 'We've got miles to go yet.' I know that. It's on your face, son. Like a scar.' Eddie was fascinated by the idea of duty and ka as something that left a mark, something that might look like decoration to one eye and disfigurement to another. Outside, thunder cracked and lightning flashed.

Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.

Laughter... is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.

By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as "we see now through a glass darkly" and "mysterious are the ways". He chooses His wonders to perform" are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window". Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it's all on purpose.

It's a tough life if you don't weaken.

Don’t go beyond, no matter how much you feel you need to, Doctor. The barrier was not made to be broken. Remember this: there is more power here than you know. It is old and always restless. Remember.