Four Past Midnight

A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had to give was not much of a woman.

I still believe in the resilience of the human heart and the essential validity of love;I still believe that connections between people can be made and that the spirits which inhabit us sometimes touch. I still believe that the cost of these connections is horribly, outrageously high... and I still believe that the value received far outweighs the price which must be paid. (From introductory notes.)

And didn't they say that, although curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought the beast back?

Never believe a writer. Listen to them, by all means, but never believe them.

Then his lids closed slowly over his slightly bloodshot eyes, and Mort Rainey, who had yet to discover what true horror was all about, fell asleep.

You never ever asked Lady Luck for a date; she had a way of standing men up just when they needed her the most. But if she showed up on her own ... well, it was wise to drop whatever it was you were doing and take her out and wine her and dine her just as lavishly as you could. That was one bitch who always put out if you treated her right.

still believe, I suppose, in the coming of the White and in finding a place to make a stand ... and defending that place to the death.

I’m not taking that,” Mort said, and part of him was marvelling at what a really accommodating beast a man was: when someone held something out to you, your first instinct was to take it. No matter if it was a check for a thousand dollars or a stick of dynamite with a lit and fizzing fuse, your first instinct was to take it.

Writing, it seems to me, is a secret act—as secret as dreaming—and that was one aspect of this strange and dangerous craft I had never thought about much.

Have I gotten everything right? I doubt it. Not even the great Daniel Defoe did that; in Robinson Crusoe, our hero strips naked, swims out to the ship he has recently escaped....and then fills up his pockets with items he will need to stay alive on his desert island.

while the road of good intentions might end in hell, the people who tried to fill the potholes along the way deserved at least some credit.

I was drunk and half killed with fuckin