“Real people are made out of a whole lot of thingsflesh, bone, blood, nerves, stuff like that. Literary people are made out of words.”

“We sometimes hear of the death of literature or of this or that genre, but literature doesn't die, just as it doesn't 'progress' or 'decay.' It expands, it increases. When we feel that it has becom...”

“The real reason for quest is always self-knowledge.”

“Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. Its all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.”

“Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no char...”

“Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources. What results can sometimes be as much our creation as the ...”

“He was drop-dead gorgeous and I, well I was just ... dead." (Tera Hightower, Dead Chick Walking)”

“I will not negotiate with the undead!”

“It had occurred to him that if the undead don't realize that they are dead, he might easily be one of them himself.”

“Did you just mentally pistol whip that guy, with his own gun? Nice, Amber. I would have just killed him.”

“Getting up from the bed, Dominick approaches me at a slow predatory pace. Once again, I cannot move my feet.”

“Goddamn it, do it yourself. Youre five hundred years old and you cant use a telephone? Read the directions. What are you, an immortal idiot?”