“As a breath on glass, -As witch-fires that burn,The gods and monsters pass,Are dust, and return.(“The Face of the Skies”)”

“TO WHOM LIFE IS AN EXPERIENCE TO BE CARRIED AS FAR AS POSSIBLE… I have not meant to express my thought but to help you clarify what you yourself think… You are not any more different from me than your right leg is from your left, but what joins us is THE SLEEP OF REASON—WHICH PRODUCES MONSTERS.—Theory of Religion”

“…no good writing flows from a polluted well – you can write about monsters, but you can’t be one…”

“But it’s really faith that monsters live on, isn’t it? I am led irresistibly to this conclusion: food maybe life, but the source of power is faith, not food. And who is more capable of a total act of faith than a child?”

“Do not be so ridiculous, I can more easily find you someone else.” Gripping the bars of his prison so strongly that the bones of his knuckles showed prominently through his pale skin, the monster growled again, “I will have no other.” Nearing the end of his patience, Klaus demanded, “Why? Why are you being so impossible?” Turning to the diminutive creature beneath the blanket, he smiled nastily, his light red eyes gleaming, “Because he wants her.”

“I would rather live than die. I would rather die than survive as a monster.”

“If you are a monster, stand up.If you are a monster, a trickster, a fiend,If you’ve built a steam-powered wishing machineIf you have a secret, a dark past, a scheme,If you kidnap maidens or dabble in dreamsCome stand by me.If you have been broken, stand up.If you have been broken, abandoned, aloneIf you have been starving, a creature of boneIf you live in a tower, a dungeon, a throneIf you weep for wanting, to be held, to be known,Come stand by me.If you are a savage, stand up.If you are a witch, a dark queen, a black knight,If you are a mummer, a pixie, a sprite,If you are a pirate, a tomcat, a wright,If you swear by the moon and you fight the hard fight,Come stand by me. If you are a devil, stand up.If you are a villain, a madman, a beast,If you are a strowler, a prowler, a priest,If you are a dragon come sit at our feast,For we all have stripes, and we all have horns, We all have scales, tails, manes, claws and thornsAnd here in the dark is where new worlds are born.Come stand by me.”

“You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist?” And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might see themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.”

“Monsters don’t get happy endings.”

“Rafael?””Yeah?”„Do we all have monsters?”„Yes.”„Why does God give us so many monsters?”„You want to know my theory?”„Sure.”„I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”