If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one–probably a child–who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.

But it's really faith that monsters live on, isn't it? I am led irresistibly to this conclusion: food maybe life, but the source of power is faith, not food. And who is more capable of a total act of faith than a child?

And even at ten - because I'm his son, his blood? maybe - I understand that his kisses and compliments are always sincere; the are always true things. He is a monster, but the monster is not incapable of love. That was the horror of my father, little Lisey: he loved his boys.

Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.

This inhuman place makes human monsters

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.