Johnny and the Dead

I think it's IMPOSSIBLE for anyone famous to come from here, because everyone around here is insane.

Of all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit.

The point I’m making,” said Yo-Less, “is that you’ve got to help your friends, right?” He turned to Johnny. ”Now, personally, I think you’re very nearly totally disturbed and suffering from psychosomatica and hearing voices and seeing delusions,” he said “and probably ought to be locked up in one of those white jackets with the stylish long sleeves. But that doesn’t matter, ’cause we’re friends.

Look, this is just the cemetery. It's got bylaws and things! It's not Transylvania! There's just dead people here! That doesn't make it scary, does it? Dead people are people who were living once! You wouldn't be so worked up if there were living people buried here, would you?

Cards and boards, [Johnny] thought. And the dead. That's not dark forces. Making a fuss about cards and heavy metal and going on about Dungeons and Dragons stuff because it's got demon gods in it is like guarding to door when it is really coming up through the floorboards. Real dark forces... aren't dark. They're sort of gray, like Mr. Grimm. They take all the color out of life; they take a town like Blackbury and turn it into frightened streets and plastic signs and Bright New Futures and towers where no one wants to live and no one really does live. The dead seem more alive than us. And everyone becomes gray and turns into numbers and then, somewhere, someone starts to do arithmetic...

You'll get into dreadful trouble and it won't be my fault. You are bad people.

There is a night that never comes to an end.... The clock of the world turns under its own shadow. Midnight is a moving place, hurtling around the planet at a thousand miles an hour like a dark knike, cutting slices of daily bread off the endless loaf of Time.

Me?" said Johnny. "I don't know anything about science!" "Marvellous! Ideal qualification!" said Einstein. "What?" "Ignorance is very important! It is an absolutely essential step in the learning process!

When you're bouncing around from pin to pin, it is probably very difficult to know that outside the game there's a room and outside the room there's a town and outside the town there's a country and outside the country there's a world and outside the world there's a billion trillion stars and that's only the start of it... but it's there, d'you see? Once you know about it, you can stop worrying about the slot at the bottom. And you might bounce around a good deal longer.

Did I see them waving?' said Mrs Liberty 'And particling, I shouldn't wonder' said the Alderman

If we start off not knowing what we’re going to do, we could do anything,

Real dark forces…aren’t dark. They’re sort of gray, like Mr. Grimm. They take all the color out of life; they take a town like Blackbury and turn it into frightened streets and plastic signs and Bright New Futures and towers where no one wants to live and no one really does live. The dead seem more alive than us. And everyone becomes gray and turns into numbers and then, somewhere, someone starts to do arithmetic…. The

They’d come here with things to say, even if they didn’t know how to say them. The thing was to keep your head down. But if you did keep your head down, you’d drown in other people’s words. “—fully taken into. Account; at every stage of the planning process—” Johnny stood up, because it was that or drowning. He felt his head break through the tide of words, and he breathed in. And then out. "Excuse me, please?

It's wrong to think that the past is something that's just gone. It's still there. It's just that you've gone past. If you drive through a town, it's still there in the rear-view mirror. Time is a road, but it doesn't roll up behind you. Things aren't over just because they are past.

Es ist keineswegs so, daß wir nicht kämpfen wollen, teilte ihre Körpersprache mit. Doch zufälligerweise haben wir derzeit Besseres zu tun, und wir gehen jetzt, um herauszufinden, was dies ist