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1 " With effort he opened his eyes again. Was someone there with him in the dusk? Yes. Someone was standing above him, looking down at him. Tom squinted, trying to see through the gloom. Then he realized: no. It was only the scorched painting on the wall. Those painted eyes with the line of blood trickling down beside them. 'Bad day,' he thought up at them. 'It seems I've been murdered.' 'Yes,' responded the eyes at once. 'That happens sometimes when you insist on telling the truth. People don't always appreciate it.' 'It's not so bad really,' Tom told the eyes. 'Maybe I'll get to see you in heaven.' 'The road to heaven isn't death, Tommy. It's life.' Tom peered up at the eyes through the growing darkness. He thought he saw the whole painting recovered in its frame: Christ crucified, the rivulets of blood streaming down from under his crown of thorns. 'But you died.' Tom said to him. 'You died and went to heaven.' 'No,' the eyes answered. 'I lived. That's the whole point. I lived. And now you have to live, Tom. "
― Andrew Klavan , Nightmare City
2 " The road to heaven isn’t death, Tom. It’s life. "
3 " That was the trouble with searching for the truth. It wasn’t always pleasant. It wasn’t always something you wanted to find. "
4 " Its skin was ash-gray, darkened by patches of sickly red. Its semihuman features were strangely elongated, as if its head had been stretched top to bottom. Strands of greasy hair were strung across its mottled pate. Its nose was like a pit. Its cheeks were deeply sunken. Its mouth gaped open, the sharp teeth gleaming within. It would have almost seemed the face of a dead and rotting thing except that the eyes were sparkling with an eager, living cruelty. "