“…he is unlike the other customers. They sense it too, and look at him with hard eyes, eyes like little metal studs of young men... In the hush his entrance creates, there pinned into the white faces of excessive courtesy the weary woman behind the counter shows him amplifies his strangeness. He orders coffee quietly and studies the rim of the cup to steady the sliding in his stomach. He had thought, he had read, that from shore to shore all America was the same. He wonders, Is it just these people I’m outside of or is it all America?”

“There's this rushing sound, like white noise. The sound of nothing.”

“How could she ever understand that there isn't any way I could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to?”

“A song he heard Of cold that gathers Like winter's tongue Among the shadows It rose like blackness In the sky That on volcano's Vomit rise A Stone of ruin From burn to chill Like black moonrise His voice fell still...”

“Only a cynic can create horror--for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving demonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.”