Richard Matheson

"I can get pissed off very easily."

"X — This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch."

"It is a secret but I have pulled the chain out of the wall. I can see out the little window all I like."

"I thought what father said. Oh god he said. And only eight."

"This day father hit in the chain again before it had light. I have to try to pull it out again. He said I was bad to come upstairs. He said never do that again or he would beat me hard. That hurts."

"I am not so glad. All day it is cold in here. The chain comes slow out of the wall. And I have a bad anger with mother and father. I will show them. I will do what I did that once. I will screech and laugh loud. I will run on the walls. Last I will hang head down by all my legs and laugh and drip green all over until they are sorry they didn't be nice to me. If they try to beat me again I'll hurt them. I will."

"Be this the final entry In mankind’s book of psalms He knit his shroud with atoms And dug his grave with bombs."

"The memory of you shall not perish with your untimely sepulture. You are, dear friend, not so much out of the game as playing on another field."

"They passed churches. People were packed inside them. They overflowed out onto the steps. “Poor fools,” Richard muttered, his hands still shaking. Norman took a deep breath. “I wish I was a poor fool,” he said. “A poor fool who could believe in something.” “Maybe,” Richard said. Then he added, “I’d rather spend the last day believing what I think is true.”"

"You never know, he thought. You just never know. You drift along, year after year, presuming certain values to be fixed; like being able to drive on a public thoroughfare without somebody trying to murder you. You came to depend on that sort of thing. Then something occurs and all bets are off. One shocking incident and all the years of logic and acceptance are displaced and, suddenly, the jungle is in front of you again. Man, part animal, part angel. Where had he come across that phrase? He shivered. It was entirely an animal in that truck out there."