The problem with getting old was that each day had to compete with the thousands of others gone by. How wonderful would a day have to be to win such a beauty contest? To even make it into the finals? Never mind that memory rigged the game, airbrushed the flaws from its contestants, while the present had to shuffle into the spotlight unaided, all pockmarked with mundanities and baggy with annoyances.

Fucking is not an adequate name for what we just did there,' Irene said. 'We need a better word. Something more festive.''Fucktivities?' he offered.'Celebratio,' she said.'Funnilingus!

A monster crosses over into the everyday world. The mortals struggle and show great courage, but it’s no use. The monster kills first the guilty, then the innocent, until finally only one remains. The Last Boy, the Last Girl. There is a final battle. The Last One suffers great wounds, but in the final moment vanquishes the monster. Only later does he or she recognize that this is the monster’s final trick; the scars run deep, and the awareness of the truth grows like an infection. The Last One knows that the monster isn’t dead, only sent to the other side. There it waits until it can slip into the mundane world again. Perhaps next time it will be a knife-wielding madman, or a fanged beast, or some nameless tentacled thing. It’s the monster with a thousand faces. The details matter only to the next victims.

The rhythm of breath may have been our first language.

I’ve always been a sucker for the beautiful and the batshit.

Everything beautiful hurts.

Perhaps that's a smile on Delia's face-but Delia's half skull turns every expression into a leer. She says, "Your uncle had a talent, kid. He made families wherever he went.

The best aunts aren't substitute parents, they're co-conspirators.

You're being parental', I said. 'Go find that squid'.

For the first time in his life, Stony felt it. It ran like a hot wire, up from his spine, to the base of his skull. His mouth opened on its own.He wanted to bite. He wanted to bite hard.

Duty eats free will for breakfast.

There was as much joy in surrendering free will as exercising it.

He twirled a finger, the universal symbol for roll down your window -- universal despite the fact that no one had manually rolled down a window in twenty years.