“Ravens and crows. Rats. Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders. The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night. These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one, we beg, "Let it begin."”

“Let us be very strange and well-bred:
Let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while;
And as well-bred as if we were not married at all.”

“If we are to be the last of the white men who conquered the world; if we are finally to be overwhelmed by a pack of rats, let us at least face the death of our race as our ancestors faced their death---like MEN. Let us not crawl down amongst the rats begging for mercy or trying to out-sneak them and pretend to be rats ourselves!”

“We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.”

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image.”

“History, if it has taught us anything at all, has taught us that the strange ideas we deride today will one day be our celebrated truths.”

“I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!”

“One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.”

“it is strange how the dead leap out on us at street corners, or in dreams”

“We have no idea whether there were any other strange occurences in Moscow that night, and we have no intention of trying to find out, since the time has come for us to proceed to Part Two of this true narrative. Follow me, reader!”