Full Dark, No Stars

I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.

When it came to the dark fuckery of the human heart, there seemed to be no limit.

He supposed that even in Hell, people got an occasional sip of water, if only so they could appreciate the full horror of unrequited thirst when it set in again.

Life is fair. We all get the same nine-month shake in the box, and then the dice roll. Some people get a run of sevens. Some people, unfortunately, get snake-eyes. Its just how the world is.

We never cease wanting what we want, whether it's good for us or not.

All right I think we've been down here in the dark long enough. There's a whole other world upstairs. Take my hand, Constant Reader, and I'll be happy to lead you back into the sunshine. I'm happy to go there because I believe most people are essentially good. I know that I am. It's you I'm not entirely sure of.

Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt.

In the end we are all caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are all caught.

If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

They say that loving eyes can never see, but that's a fool's axiom. Sometimes, they see too much

They say suicides and murderers go to Hell. If so, I will know my way around, because I've been there for the last eight years.

This was the Darker Life, where every truth was written backward.

You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you'd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it's own imperatives

For," I said, "a murdered man or woman dies not in God's time, but in Man's. He... or she... is cut short before he... or she... can atone for sin, and so all errors must be forgiven. When you think of it that way, all murderers are a gateway for heaven.

It was really amazing the number of hard hits from which a mind could recover.

Why does she have to be such a...such a..." "Go on," I said. "The truth is never cussing, Son." "Such a bitch!

If God rewards us on earth for good deeds—the Old Testament suggests it’s so, and the Puritans certainly believed it—then maybe Satan rewards us for evil ones.

Deep inside her (ih her harrowed soul) she felt a glowing ember of fury at the man responsible for this. Tha man who had put her in this position. She looked at the pistol lying beside the basin, and knew that if he were here, she would use it on him without a moment's hesitation. Knowing that made her feel confused about herself. It also made her feel a little stronger.

There are always worse things waiting. You think you have seen the most terrible thing, the one that coalesces all your nightmares into a freakish horror that actually exists, and the only consolation is that there can be nothing worse. Even if there is, your mind will snap at the sight of it, and you will know no more. But there is worse, your mind does not snap, and somehow you carry on. You might understand that all the joy has gone out of the world for you, you might wish you were the one who was dead - but you go on. You might realize that you are in a hell of your own making, but you go on nevertheless. Because there is nothing else to do.

How life did imitate art sometimes. And the cruder the art, the closer the imitation.

The wife whose sweetly given reply in the face of any problem would be, "Whatever you think is best, dear." Women, take note: a wife like that never needs to fear bubbling away the last of her life through a cut throat.

My girl has got a bun in her oven, and I guess you know who did the damn cooking.

Old habits died hard. Often, she thought, they don't die until we do.

Outside, a gusty October breeze was combing leaves from the trees and sending them across her backyard in colorful skitters.

Is there hell, or do we make our own on earth?

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do—to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.

A successful marriage was a balancing act-that was a thing everyone knew. A successful marriage was also dependent on a high tolerance for irritation.

if you found enough cat hairs in a person's house, you pretty much had to assume there was a feline on the premises somewhere

Or perhaps it was the voice of the Darker Girl.