Darrell Schweitzer

"Nothing frightens a miser more than the prospect of not getting paid."

"“Stand here and look,” he said. “Look, and you’ll see the Earth as it always was, even before the death of The Goddess. I come here sometimes to reflect, when the toils of my station are more than I can bear. I come out here to where it seems that mankind and all his works have made no more impression on the Earth than the passing shadow of a cloud. I told myself not to worry, to face what I must face with courage and dignity, for nothing matters ultimately. I come out here to watch the sun rise.”"

"Men called me a philosopher once, but as the years burdened me further I cared less and less for the pressing questions of astronomy and geomancy and metaphysics and the like. They had been pressing since long before I was born, and I knew they would continue to be so as long as there were two students left to argue over the difference between the real and the ideal."

"This place was not divine. It was enchanted, which was a different thing altogether."

"I listened to all this with the dull incomprehension of a pig in the slaughterhouse overhearing the talk of two butchers."

"“Have I come to a second Bedlam? Are you all mad here?” “Madness is the order of the day,” the lord replied. “Even God is mad. We follow divine example.”"

"“Christ and Satan!” “Swear by whomever you like,” laughed the King. “Why not Jupiter, Thor, Mithra, and Ahura-Mazda also? It’ll do you as much good.”"

"“Listen, and listen well. This is the wisdom to end wisdom, the secret of all secrets.” They both leaned very close, and he told them. “Some people…will believe…anything!”"

"I am going into a far country, from which I shall never return. They say that when we depart thence, when we walk the last long road, if we are brave and true and avoid all the perils, we come to paradise, and sit there listening to The Musician play beautiful songs for all of eternity. But this is uncertain, for no witness has ever come back to report it."

"Prophecies and mysteries. The world was full of them. He didn’t care."

"The true horror story requires a sense of evil, not in necessarily in a theological sense; but the menaces must be truly menacing, life-destroying, and antithetical to happiness."

"Behind her, far away, filling the skies that were not of Earth, was the face of another, a mountainous Dark One who sat awash in a lake of molten metal with a sword in his hand. When I gaze upon him I knew the truth of all. I knew that if God is mad, and the signs show that he is, his Foe is mad also, and there can be no hope for the world between them, for creation is but a battleground for two maniacs in their death struggle."