“I'm serious, Jim. You need to put this crap away. You walk into school on Monday talking to me, or anyone else, about the city's pesky troll problem, and you're not exactly going to get a lot of pe...”

“He paused in the hallway, sniffing the air. He scowled, sniffed some more. He pressed an intercom button on the wall. "Betty, I distinctly smell sewage. Could you get a plumber out here ASAP?" Seve...”

“Something warned me that what I might see would haunt me forever.”

“Is it...can we...is it safe?" Tub checked the lot but he seemed unconcerned. "Coach Lawrence nabbed him for practice. We live to fight another day, soldier." "No...I mean, the thing...is it...?" Tu...”

“So I have 8 to 10 screenplays written and unproduced. And frankly, some of them are my favorite stories. I have a Western version of The Count Of Monte Cristo where the count has a clockwork hand. ...”

“I say making movies is like eating a sandwich of shit. Sometimes you get more bread, sometimes less bread, but you always get shit." (Guardian interview 2006)”

“I do not love men: I love what devours them.”

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

“Part of his mind was screaming, but it was a distant one and easy to ignore.”

“On the right, a brigade of trolls. On the left, squabling civil servants. Invasion of zombies. Have I managed to summarize the zeitgeist now?”