Dragoonfliy

“The ducks in St James's Park are so used to being fed bread by secret agents meeting clandestinely that they have developed their own Pavlovian reaction. Put a St James's Park duck in a laboratory cage and show it a picture of two men -- one usually wearing a coat with a fur collar, the other something sombre with a scarf -- and it'll look up expectantly.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“if human beings really grasped how synthetic their world was - how much of it was stitched together not from direct perception, but from interpolation, memory, educated guesswork - they would go quietly mad.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Absolution Gap

“An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Tom felt his skin crawl as he laid eyes on the center of the pool. A great, awful thing towered over him from the tiny island. Its gnarled, flesh-colored roots were planted in the lake of offal like drowned snakes, drawing its sick nourishment.”
― Brian Geoffrey Wood, Dead Roots