Welcome to Night Vale

"Thursday night, the City Council is voting on a new measure that would prohibit breathing as an involuntary muscular action. Historically, the human body has been able to control breathing without the brain having to continuously activate the diaphragm. Under the new rule, all residents of Night Vale would be required to make the physical choice of whether or not (and when) to breathe."

"Dear listeners. Just my voice travelling from this microphone, travelling silent and immediate across sleepy homes and lost souls to your ears. You curl under a blanket, protecting your body from the world, excepting a few clever spiders. And you are listening. Hearing me."

"Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you now. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us? We can cope with that. We can do this together. You and I, drowsily, but comfortably."

"Stay tuned now for our two-hour special: "Car Alarms and their Variations", brought to you commercial-free by Canada Dry."

""This is a story about you," said the man on the radio. And you are pleased, because you always wanted to hear about yourself on the radio. Welcome to Night Vale."

"Some mysteries aren't questions to be answered, but just a kind of opaque fact. A thing which exists to be not known."

"This year's keynote speaker is an audio tape of droning moans leaden with subliminal tips about acheiving personal prosperity."

"Today's program has been sponsored by the physical act of gulping. For thousands of years, gulping has been there for human beings when they needed an expressive gesture of the throat. […] Gulp now, and receive a complimentary prize package, which will be conviently buried in an unmarked spot somewhere in the scrublands. Find it, and it's yours."

"We're all being monitored almost 24/7. So, they'll probably hear you just fine."

"Stay tuned for two commercial-free hours of E sharp."

"Bananas are hardly that slippery. But watch your step anyway."

"You too have survived. Survived everything up to this moment."

"Your existence is not impossible. But it's also not very likely."

"More on this… eventually. Probably."

"[regarding a two cent increase in the price of postage stamps] It is not enough, apparently, for the Postal Service to violently assault our minds with visions, but they are also intent on bleeding our wallets dry. For shame."

"Stay tuned next for me saying "Good night, Night Vale. Good night.""

"Here's a look at the community calendar: […] Saturday has been merged with Sunday to create Super-day! Monday will not harm you, but you should stack up on latex gloves nonetheless. And Tuesday is hornet-free dining at the Olive Garden."

"Stay tuned next for an exact word-for-word repeat of this broadcast, that will seem to you imperceptibly but unshakably different, although you will never be able to explain why."

"Of course the sandstorm was created by the government! The City Council announced that this morning. The government makes no secret that they can control the weather and earthquakes and monitor thoughts and activities. That's the stuff a big government is supposed to do."

"The police remind us that scientists are comedians and that they should stick to comedy."

"Stay tuned next for the sound of some helpless thing being eaten."

"Let’s not dwell on our corpse strewn past. Let’s celebrate our corpse strewn future!"

"Hang a map of a place you will never go on your living room wall. Draw new streets. Tear off bodies of water. Wait for news crews to arrive."

"As their motto goes "A thousand ways in, no way out. [Subway], eat fresh. Eat so terribly, terribly fresh. Terribly, awesomely, gruesomely, terrifyingly fresh.""

"Ask your doctor if right is left for you."

"Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held."

"Listeners, stay tuned next for our newest hit program, "Open-Mouthed Chewing"."

"Remember, if confronted by a librarian while looking for a book to check out, do not attempt to escape by climbing a tree. There are no trees in the library. And the precious moments it will take you to look around and realize this, will allow the librarian to strike."

"Perfection is not real. Perfection is not human. Carlos is not perfect- no, even better- he is imperfect. Everything about him, and us, and all of this is imperfect. And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and cracks into which our outsized love can seep and pool."

"When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves."

"Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?"

"I like my coffee like I like my nights: dark, endless and impossible to sleep through."

"Love is a shambling thing, gray-faced and gasping. It moves in from the west, the setting sun behind it. Those who see it avert their eyes. Love stumbles and shutters, love grasps but is not grasped. It sees a man, and the man does not look away. Love reaches out a gray hand. The man touches the band just lightly, just on the palm, and the man feels heat inside of him. His heart is on fire. This is not a metaphor. His heart is on fire and so, soon, is his skin, his hair, his teeth become more and more visible as his face shrinks and melts away. Love watches dispassionately. Love does not love what it does, love only does it. Love does not have eyes and neither, now, does the man."