"I thought everything in the world was already discovered. Already in my books. A lot of dead stuff that put me to sleep. That was the day I understood the world is still living."

"It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."

"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."

"She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community. The death of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around."

"There are moments in time when the axis of the universe shifts, when life as you knew it is irrevocably altered. When the hiss and grind of the gears fell silent, some deeply rooted instinctive part of me knew this was one of those moments."

"Death is the night sky, the background against which the fleeting fireworks of life are displayed, an empty stage upon which the drama of life is played."