She might have been pretty when she started out, but the world had moved on since then.

When an imaginative person gets into mental trouble, the line between seeming and being has a way of disappearing-.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . And then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

The eyes were damned, the staring, glaring eyes of one who sees but does not see, eyes ever turned inward to the sterile hell of dreams beyond control, dreams unleashed, risen out of the stinking swamps of the unconscious.

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up.

Sometimes the only thing to do is to take the thing that you must have. Even if someone gets hurt.