C. Robert Cargill, Dreams and Shadows

"Monsters are very real. But they're not just creatures. Monsters are everywhere. They're people. They're nightmares... They are the things that we harbor within ourselves. If you remember one thing, even above remembering me, remember that there is not a monster dreamt that hasn't walked once within the soul of a man."

"You see, there was this man, and he was a good man; he worked hard and did everything to the best of his ability. All he desired was for the most beautiful woman in the kingdom to be his wife. Now this wasn't all bad because she actually loved him too--very much so--but this vizier, he wanted her as well and not for so noble a cause as love."What did he want her for"Yashar paused for a moment. "So that people could look at him and say, 'He must be a great man to have such a beautiful wife.'"Oh. I thought he wanted her for sex," said Colby, disappointed."

"Heaven has no room for the self-righteous."

"It was the literary equivalent of a brown paper bag."

"The universe was a vast expanse, far greater than he could ever conceive, and he had seen but a fraction of an inch of it."

"All the light had fallen away from the world, with only the fog illuminated now. Even the stars struggled against the black, managing only the slightest pinpricks of twinkles through a gloom that was both everywhere and nowhere at once. It wasn't the dark of night; it was the tenebrous shadow of bad omens."

"...the universe is energy. All of it. Everything is energy that can be altered simply by willing it to be altered. It's as if we are God's waking dream, each gifted with a small piece of his consciousness; the beauty of that arrangement is that we create the dream for him. If you can understand that, if you can wrap your mind around it, then you can conjure up anything you want from out of the ether. Provided there is material enough to do it."

"All right, the universe is energy. All of it. Everything is energy that can be altered simply by willing it to be altered. It's as if we are God's waking dream, each gifted with a small piece of his consciousness; the beauty of that arrangement is that we create the dream for him. If you can understand that, if you can wrap your mind around it, then you can conjure up anything you want from out of the ether. Provided this is material enough to do it."

"The sum of a man isn't the things he's done, it is the world he leaves behind."

"You know better than anyone that nothing lasts. Nothing good. Nothing bad. Everything lives. Everything dies. Sometimes cities just fall into the sea. It's not a tragedy, that's just the way it is. People look around them and see the world and say this is how the world is supposed to be. Then they fight to keep it that way. They believe that this is what was intended - whether by design or cosmic accident - and that everything exists in a tenuous balance that must be preserved. But the balance is bullshit. The only thing constant in this world is the speed at which things change. Rain falls, waters rise, shorelines erode. What is one day magnificent seaside property in ancient Greece is the next resting thirty feet below the surface. Islands rise from the sea and continents crack and part ways forever. What was once a verdant forest teeming with life is now resting one thousand feet beneath a sheet of ice in Antarctica; what was once a glorious church now rests at the bottom of a dammed-up lake in Kansas. The job of nature is to march on and keep things going; ours is to look around, appreciate it, and wonder what's next?"

"There was no such thing as destiny, and no such thing as prophecy; there was only matter slamming into other matter like two toy trucks in the hands of a child."

"It's as if some bored ethereal being is fiddling with the remote control to his imagination, clicking channel after channel without finding anything to capture his interest for very long."

"And when his head slumped forward into his book, she giggled, for she knew that he was hers."

"I don't remember her. But she feels special. There's this hole in my heart every time I draw her; you know, a sick sort of feeling. Like she's someone I lost."

"Love is the most primal force in the universe. It inspires us, pulling us over otherwise insurmountable obstacles. Art is created to exalt it, children are born of it, and entire lives are devoted to seeking it out in the most unlikely places."