“Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.”

“There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.”

“Madness rides the star-wind… claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses… dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial…”

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.”

“Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.”

“Whence is yonder flower so strangely bright?
Would the sunset's last reflected shine
Flame so red from that dead flush of light?
Dark with passion is its lifted line,
Hot, alive, amid the falling night.”

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

“One naked star has waded through
The purple shadows of the night,
And faltering as falls the dew
It drips its misty light.”

“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were okay, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that simply wasn't so”