“Sunrise–generally a rural event, in cities a mere abstraction–is still an hour and a half away. The city’s appetite for Saturday work is robust. At six o’clock, the Euston Road is in full throat. Now occasional motorbikes soar above the ensemble, whining like busy wood saws. Also about this time come the first choruses of police sirens, rising and falling in Doppler shifts: it’s no longer too early for bad deeds. Finally she rolls over to face him. This side of the human form exhales a communicative warmth. As they kiss he imagines the green eyes seeking out his own. This commonplace cycle of falling asleep and waking, in darkness, under private cover, with another creature, a pale soft tender mammal, putting faces together in a ritual of affection, briefly settled in the eternal necessities of warmth, comfort, safety, crossing limbs to draw nearer–a simple daily consolation, almost too obvious, easy to forget by daylight. Has a poet ever written it up? Not the single occasion, but its repetition through the years. He’ll ask his daughter.”

                     --Ian McEwan, Saturday, 2005

“HORROR CAN ASSUME MANY FORMS. THE BLOODLUST OF THE VAMPIRE…THE MAN-KILLING SAVAGERY OF THE WEREWOLF…BUT PERHAPS THE DEEPEST, MOST PROFOUND VARIETY OF ALL IS ALSO THE QUIETEST…THE HORROR OF UNCHOSEN SOLITUDE. THE GNAWING PAIN WITHIN ONE MAN. THE ORDEAL OF LONELINESS”

                     --Steve Gerber, MAN-THING, Vol. 1, No. 11, 
                            "Dance to the Murder," 1974

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)