Quotes from Chet Williamson

Doctor Janey, expert in giving pain.

The doctor paused and measured his words carefully, scratching and stroking at his wiry broad mustache as if it were a beloved terrier curled under his nose. Matthew wondered what other psychiatrists saw in that repetitive gesture—masturbation? obsession for a long-gone pet?

If you got the chance, you acted. If you sat back and waited and hoped that something good would come along and save you, or fix what you were too frightened or weak or stupid to fix for yourself, you could wait a lifetime and still be trapped.

Kids were always writing FUCK on things. Hollis Jurkowski had always wondered whether the students, ranging in age from five to twelve, really knew what it meant or whether they just wrote it because they knew the word was particularly upsetting to grownups.

Here he was now, the supposedly Catholic ruler of an Orthodox people under Moslem attack.

And Capwell did feel it, a hot surge of power and vitality and elation. It was as if he'd just won a million bucks in a contest, had a triple orgasm, received a shot of a potent narcotic, drunk deeply from the Fountain of Youth. Simultaneously.

The worst thing that happens is there's an earthquake and we all get sucked into a river of molten lava." "Well …" Ruth said. "That won't hurt much.

Kate had attended a Presbyterian church with her family in Norfolk; she'd heard how the God of Moses could flip out and go pretty damn nuts when things didn't turn out His way.

A bloody hand had left its imprint on a lampshade. Squiggly marks slid down the wall, as if a child had been creating a macabre fingerpainting there. For some reason the image popped into Don's head of a teacher standing before a class, saying, Okay, kiddies, today we're going to fingerpaint. Everyone got paper and blood ready?

I owe you a six-pack." "Imported?" "Will Detroit do?" Roper laughed. "Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul. Any of those exotic places. Just as long as it makes foam when you pour it in the glass.

I can't believe you came down here alone. Why, Deb?" "Why not?" "That's a reason?" "Sure, it's the best one.

He recalled what Lyndon Johnson had said when Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson suddenly found himself president. Words to the effect that he would do the best he could do, because that was all he could do.

This is not a nice vampire, Claire. It feeds people to its pets." "Well, you know how monsters are." Grinning.

There are people out there with very limited horizons. They wear social blinders. They feel it is better to play it safe, to run scared, and blame the most convenient scapegoat. And that means censorship…and censorship is the attempted murder of our whole culture. Censure replicates itself until it engulfs everything.

Julia was a nerd, a schoolgirl. She did all her homework and even extra-credit projects, got straight As, never got in trouble. Maybe that was why she was in this group. But Lucy didn't think even Jerry could help with a problem that big.

Hope, like the dim glow from a flashlight with a dying battery, lingered.

Mr. Michaelson went on teaching the class then, as if history was the most important thing in the world, and even though she didn't want to, Lucy actually heard some of what he said.

The guy probably didn't want anything, at least not anything that would make sense to someone with a normal brain. People who did this sort of thing just sort of went bug-fuck. Something in the brain shorted out, blew a fuse, whatever.

Sunday morning. The air was muggy and oppressive, bloated with the potential for rain. It was the kind of day that invited inactivity and foreboding thoughts.

An ant crawled across the counter. Lucy shuddered and watched it disappear under the metal edge of the sink. Dad said everything had a right to live, but Lucy didn't think that ought to include bugs.

As he moved, he tried to figure out what he'd do if he got caught. What could he say? It's okay, guys. Since I'm the whole police force, that means I'm the SWAT team as well, and I'm practicing my sneaking-up techniques. Helping to keep Ice Island safe for democracy.

Two thousand miles to dine on a dish of red herring," he said.

An entire meal made of pumpkin, from something resembling chicken (strips of rind from near the skin, boiled in chicken stock and then broiled) and something else resembling mashed potatoes, and things that looked like carrots and cucumbers and even peas, with pumpkin tea and pumpkin ice cream for dessert. Pumpkin ravioli, and soup, and sausage. Pumpkin pancakes, waffles. Pumpkin french toast, made with pumpkin bread.

All Hungarians are supposed to be descendants of a lost tribe of Martians who came to colonize the earth. That's why their language has nothing in common with other European languages.