...that she was the one who'd made friends with the Snake, that she'd let it lick the blood of her first menstruation, that she ... ooo eee, that she ... ooo eee, that she ... ooo, eee, that she now knew what the Serpent knew.

There's no such thing as security in this life, sweetheart; and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off you'll be. The person who strives for security …

'Not naive,' Conch Shell had corrected him, 'He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear.'

Night, when tangos play on the nurse's radio and rat poison sings its own hot song behind the cellar door. Night, when the long snake feeds, when the black sed…

O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven - of silkworm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!

He glutted black ravens on the rampart of the stronghold, though he was no Arthur.

This is Alberich's dream come true -- Nibelheim, world dominion, activity, work, everywhere the oppressive feeling of steam and fog.