"It's time for the bloodletting," I told him. I had the needle ready in my hand.

"Although it is within our power to eliminate poverty, for example, I'm not so sure that we have it in us to avoid the most terrible consequences of global warming. I feel that, because there is always hope that a human being can be talked around—talked off a ledge, talked into putting down his gun—too many of us treat our planet as if it was amenable to such persuasion. It isn't: it's not human, and it's implacable."

Peter Straub is a very well-known figure, with strong tastes, and the task he has undertaken in this very conspicuous and very sizeable (though not perhaps quite sufficiently vast) enterprise is a delicate one.

to sing their own dark songs