"Despite everything he had or might have (except, of course, another human being), life gave no promise of improvement…"

"A woman. Alive. In the daylight. He stood, mouth partly open, gaping at the woman. She was young, he could see now as…"

"Something black and of the night had come crawling out of the Middle Ages. Something with no framework or credulity, …"

"The world’s gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become tri…"

"To his complete astonishment, he later found himself offering up a stumbling prayer that the dog would be protected. …"

"Sometimes he had indulged in daydreams about finding someone. More often, though, he had tried to adjust to what he s…"

"I don’t know why I thought that would help but I called him. I’d have called anyone just to have another mind to help…"

"They were strange, the facts about them: their staying inside by day, their avoidance of garlic, their death by stake…"

"Well, it was true. ... True, he thought, but no one ever got the chance to know it. Oh, they knew it was something, b…"

"When I first joined my local library, I read endlessly. I immediately headed for the fantasy section, fairy tales, yo…"