� Still, picture the noble snake, having molted, slithering away, newly glistening. There’s the skin, in a big disorganized pile behind it. Is the snake asking you to notice that a snake was here earlier? No; the snake doesn’t care one way or the other. It has moved on. No, indeed, you can’t call a snake sloppy or careless or fault it for leaving tracks in its wake. Besides, who are you? Snakes have been here for millions of years. � � John Darnielle

� In the movies, people almost never talked about the towns they spent their lives in; they ran around having adventures and never stopped to get their bearings. It was weird, when you thought about it. They only remembered where they were from if they wanted to complain about how awful it was there, or, later, to remember it as a place of infinite promise, a place whose light had been hidden from them until it became unrecoverable, at which point its gleam would become impossible to resist. � � John Darnielle