Rob Thurman

“He touched my little brother—I stopped his heart.It was a fair trade.”

“Anyone with less intestinal fortitude, inhuman or not, would've been curled up on the floor sucking his thumb. I basked in the attention and took it as my due. I'd always known I was a star. Without me, the Auphe were nothing. I was the key, and the gate was a lock only I could open. At this moment I was, as I'd always suspected, God. Spreading my arms, I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, my streaming hair a silk touch on my shoulder blades. "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Opening my eyes, I smiled gently at the Auphe.”

“Grocery lists I lost; my shit list was forever.”

“It's true. Goodfellow is monogamous. he's become a freak. A pervert. Depravity on the cloven hoof.""Or his balls fell off," suggested another puck who came to the bar. "Or his dick. Anyone who would hang out with Bacchus is bound to get a catastrophic genital rotting illness at some point.”

“Several months ago there was a somewhat, in some people's eyes, relatively normal Cal--or by and large normal--the best he was able to be as half Auphe. Occasionally he did lose his shit, attacked and ate deer while on road trips through the woods, created massive holes in between dimensions to shove through malevolently murderous pucks, and once in a while ripped out an Auphe's throat with his teeth. He also opened a gate or two to save his friends, blew up an antihealer from the inside out to save the world, cleaned his guns while watching porn, and generally was a smart-ass to everyone.Normal.”

“Spartacus," I called, "how's it hanging?" Probably not too well. Once you're dead, had your organs removed, and are resurrected as an undead mummified cat, your testicles probably looked like old raisins that had rolled under the couch. Raisins didn't tend to...hang.”

“...she'd also said more than once that I wasn't half as clever as I thought I was. Considering what I thought of myself, that still made me pretty damn clever.”

“And he had it all over Octavian, let me tell you. Hung like a Pegasus, he was.”

“There are a lot of truths in this world. When it rains it pours. It's always darkest before the dawn. He who smelt it dealt it.”

“No, you're not like me. You're better. A better person, a better goddamn everything. Now, eat your breakfast. And if you open your mouth to say you aren't everything I know you are, I'll stuff that bagel in it. Plain. Without cream cheese.Healthy food--the ultimate threat.”

“Every inner touch, every one of its fingerprints on my brain, burned like acid. It shredded the walls of my soul like tissue paper, it clawed its way into my very center, I couldn’t tell anymore where it began and I ended. It poured into me like a river into the sea, mixing, melding, until we were one. One. For better or worse. Until death do us part.”

“Why is it always the world? Why is it never just half a block? Or Jersey? You know, something we could live without?”

“The fact that the bodies weren’t my first concern–-pissing and bodies were, in that order—-helped too. Killers have different priorities.”

“Wouldn’t you leave a light on? Knowing what I knew and not knowing anything else at all, why would I want the darkness where the monsters hide?Because killers hide there too.”

“He tried to turn me into a buffet?” I gritted my teeth. “Before he killed me? He couldn’t kill me first and then eat me? That’s just fucking rude.”

“Niko caught my hand and slapped it lightly down on the bar. “Pistol whipping elderly women isn’t precisely our mission statement, Cal.” I hadn’t been going to pistol-whip her. Yell at her a little more, then pick her up and toss her out into the street. Some risk of a broken hip there, but that wasn’t pistol-whipping… unless she tried to come back in.”

“Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.”

“Good Samaritans: Truth, justice and the American way–for them it wasn't only a comic book code; it was a way of life. it was admirable, courageous, and inconvenient as shit. -Stefan, CHIMERA”

“Niko was a man of few words and flying, sugary snacks. I like that in a human. ~Catcher”

“All of his life had been about making sure I kept mine.”

“Leandros's favorite place had turned out not to be vegetarian, but vegan, which was for people who preferred their suicide slow.”

“Pooh hater,' I muttered under my breath.'Winnie-the-Pooh was not a koala--why am I even arguing about this with you?”

“Home is where the heart is or where you bury the ones you want to eat later.”

“Snap judgments? I'd gotten over those about the time I was toilet trained. Swore off diapers and faith in the human experience all in one week.”

“At least that's what his note said, along with a scathing reminder that dishes didn't wash themselves and the fungus in the bathroom was one day away from evolving into sentient life. I folded the note into an airplane and sailed it across the room. It ended up perched jauntily on top of the ancient television. It looked good there and I left it as a tribute to freedom-loving fungi everywhere.”

“What're you still doing up? You know all good little ninjas should be in bed, visions of homicidal sugarplums dancing in their heads.”

“The front door had been secure at some point in time, I suppose, but now it usually hung ajar by a few inches, the gap‐toothed grin of a dirty old man.”

“Most kids don't believe in fairy tales very long. Once they hit six or seven they put away "Cinderella" and her shoe fetish, "The Three Little Pigs" with their violation ofbuilding codes, "Miss Muffet" and her well‐shaped tuffet—all forgotten or discounted.And maybe that's the way it has to be. To survive in the world, you have to give up the fantasies, the make‐believe.”

“I'd be a monster fighter who rode the bus. It didn't get any more bad-ass than that.”

“You're so very good at that. The temper, the scowl. You must drink shots of testosterone in your morning coffee.”

“They don't have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too.”

“Look at the ex-demon with his big boy pants on now.”

“You're the little spoon, aren't you?”

“Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live. Of course, being the leaf wasn't exactly desirable either.”

“All I cared was that she had never lied. She was honest in a world just the opposite, and a cool oasis in my life. She was who she said she was, and everything Sophia, my mother, the pathologically manipulative liar, had never been.”

“If there is no trust, there is nothing. Trust is all.”

“Memories - you can't escape them, but you can't let them rule you either.”

“As I stood, I took in a last breath of spring-scented air, listened to the birdsong, and then saw a member of wildlife the conservationists hadn't planned on reviving in this place. A perv in a white shirt and polyester pants. A standard hide-in-the-bushes-and-whack-it perv. Fat and balding, it was as appealing as watching a giant marshmallow go at it.”

“...the bus is full of German tourists in shorts so short that they required a Brazilian wax for the men as well as the women. There had been thighs as bountiful as baking bread, as wobbly as Jello, and as pitted as the surface of the moon.”

“I am your brother. I was supposed to be your brother before either of us was born. Karmic debt. It appears I was Vlad the Impaler or Genghis Khan in a past life.”

“When life gives you lemons. . . You might as well shove 'em where the sun don't shine, because you sure as hell aren't ever going to see any lemonade.”

“It is now. It is always now. Now is good. Now could be the best. My name is Catcher. My name was Catcher.My name...my name...I am...I am lost, I am found and then I am free and I am happy.When I jump over that edge, someone leaps with me, shoulder to shoulder. I smell kinship on him. Kinship is all. I'm not alone. Never alone.I land, earth below me, moon above. I am wolf. We are pack.And that is all I need.”

“I raised another shot. "That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance.”

“Pick up your clothes. I am not your maid. How do I know this? A maid cannot kill you with a tube sock. I can. ”

“I've always enjoyed a challenge," Niko remarked, shifting through the powder to lift something out. "I think perhaps there are other things I could enjoy instead. Bonsai trees, painting, forging my own weapons. The opportunities are endless." He opened his hand to show me the small braid of several yellowed hairs. "Voodoo." "Think it would work?" I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn't usually my thing, but in this case, I'd make an exception.”

“People--stupid when they lived; potentially stupid when they died.”

“We all have our security blankets in this world. Some are just sharper than others.”

“I have people in my life, of course. Some write; some don't. Some read; some don't. Some stare vacantly into space when I talk the geeky talk and walk the geeky walk, but they make killer chocolate chip pancakes and so all is forgiven.”