"How Horrid' has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing."

"Maybe I should have got some chili-slaw dogs from Shorty’s. Everybody loves those.” “Buddy,” Lars said, dropping his shoes to the deck with a thump, “sit yourself down and stop fussing. You’re reminding me of my Aunt Glynna with all this temperature takin’ and foil tuckin’. This food is fine."

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for."

"Then, almost as an afterthought, she turned and locked the bathroom door. If he thought he was going to seduce her, make her stupid enough to believe his lies by getting her into bed, he'd better think again. She stepped into the water. Besides, women didn't lose brain cells at the thought of sex. Only men did."

"Perhaps because my town was so naturally gothic in its architecture and relative isolation - the roads often closed in winter - my stories tended toward the ghostly and the creepily suspenseful right from the get-go."

"I stopped hating and started just being. My whole life, I had been the most defensive person you'd meet, unable to tolerate any criticism. But now I started listening and being."

"If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me.All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me."