Lover," she whispers, and closes her eyes. It falls upon her. Love is like dying.

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.

Now panic beats and flutters inside my skull like a flock of starlings locked in an attic.

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one

A man who lies about beer makes enemies.

There are really very few economies of scale in centralising or standardising advertising.