- Ben Mears: You're a vampire hunter now.
- Dr. James Cody: We'll be home by midnight?
- Ben Mears: No, that's Cinderella.
- Matt Burke: Uh, Mr. Mears, should anyone in their right mind trust an author?
- Ben Mears: A good author illuminates truth.
- [to Ruth Crockett's raised hand]
- Ben Mears: Yes?
- Ruth Crockett: What's the truth about this town?
- Ben Mears: I used to think nothing happened here. But the truth is everything happens here. One has to look close in a small town. The beauty is in the details. You have all the horror of the Qalai Janghi prison right here in one battered child. All the beauty of Michelangelo in the alabaster calf of one shoulder-high waitress. The longing you feel for the boy or girl in the next row is equal to or greater than the longing your favorite musician feels for his favorite supermodel. Never minimize your feelings. Or this town.
- Floyd Tibbits: Crockett's paying us a hundred bucks to deliver this crate. If I said to you, Mike, I'd pay you two hundred bucks to come into the Marsten House, alone, at night, would you do it?
- Mike Ryerson: Hell no.
- Floyd Tibbits: Me neither. I find that humorous.
- Susan Norton: [whispering] I can hear my heart beating.
- Mark Petrie: I can hear your heart beating, too.
- Ben Mears: Beneath the postcard camouflage, there's little good in small towns. Mostly boredom, interspersed with a dull, mindless, moronic evil.
- Dud Rogers: Say, aren't you one of the fellas that bought the Marsten place?
- Kurt Barlow: Very good.
- Dud Rogers: Are there any ghosts in that old house?
- Kurt Barlow: Ghosts? No. No ghosts.
- Mark Petrie: [Mark is standing at the entrance to the Marsten House cellar, but he is unable to go farther, despite wanting to help Susan, who is held down there] Susan!
- Susan Norton: Mark? I can't see, it's so dark.
- [Barlow bites her offscreen]
- Susan Norton: Ohhhhh...
- Kurt Barlow: Come down, boy.
- Mark Petrie: I know your name!
- Kurt Barlow: I admire you, come down for a taste.
- Mark Petrie: It's Barlow!
- Kurt Barlow: There's enough here for two, why would you run, boy?
- [Mark flees out of a window and out of the Marsten House]
- Ben Mears: The town has secrets, but sees through lies. Even the ones you tell yourself. What are you doing coming back to the place where you lived as a boy? Trying to recapture something that was irrevocably lost? What magic do you expect to recapture by walking roads you once walked and are now probably asphalted... and straightened... and litter-shot with tourist beer cans. Do you even know?