“Claire scraped her chair back, walked over to the cordless phone lying on the counter, and dialed from the business card still stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. Four rings, and a cheerful voice answered on the other end and announced she’d reached Common Grounds. “Hi,’” Claire said. “Can I talk to Sam, please?’”“Sam? Hold on.’” The phone clattered, and Claire could hear the buzz of activity in the background—milk being steamed, people chatting, the usual excitement of a busy coffee shop. She waited, jittering one leg impatiently, until the voice came back on the line. “Sorry,’” it said. “He’s not here tonight. I think he went to the party.’”“The party?’”“You know, the zombie frat party? Epsilon Epsilon Kappa? The Dead Girls’ Dance?’”“Thanks,’” Claire said. She hung up and turned to face Michael and Eve, who were staring at her in outright surprise. She held up the phone. “The power of technology. Embrace it.”

“Welcome to Morganville.You'll never want to leave.And even if you do...well, you can't. Sorry about that.”

“Married and buried, wed and dead.”

“Oliver: Fear is the natural state of anything that dies.”

“I'm not obliged to defend your dignity. Provided you have any.”

“And about Shane, I swear, if he doesn't snap out of it, I'm going to punch him in the face. Well, punch him in the face and then run like hell." - Eve Rosser”

“You are so lucky I'm too tired to murder you right now.”

“Do be careful. I can't replace you as easily as all that.”

“They came out in a dim, damp basement - a generic sort of place, full of moulding boxes. 'You take me to the nicest places,' Claire said, and sneezed.”

“Amelie seemed to focus on her again. For a few seconds she regarded her, frowning, and then smiled just a little. "So I recall," she said. "Not all wars are waged with bullets and swords, indeed. Some are wars of wills and ideas. It's good we both remember that." The smile faded. "But not all ideas win the war, and not all wills are strong enough. Darkness can descend so easily.”

“It's been happening since I was in kindergarten. Not them all the time, but other kids, you know. Every day. It never stops, and it never goes away, thanks to the Internet--it just keeps happening every minute, every day. And I just want it to stop. I think about how to do it, you know. How to kill them. All kinds of elaborate things, like trapping them in pits and burying them alive, or covering them with concrete.”