"Robin kicked dirt over the remains of the campfire, trying to forget the images he'd seen in the flames the night before. His friends, tortured by red-haired apes wielding straight razors. Babies with too-big heads and mouths full of needle teeth, crawling relentlessly forward."

"Her father collects butterflies, pins them down and seals them under glass. She's seen him in the garage, where he keeps his collection, looking at them. Sometimes, when he doesn't know she's there, he rips off their wings, and that frightens her."

"He touched the paper, read the words. They were lines from the William Carlos Williams poem about plums in the icebox, so sweet, so cold; what Cory's wife Linda had called the coolest, cruelest poem ever written."