People like to say how much they like stuff, but with 'The Sunset Tree,' people shared stories about what it meant to them. And that stuff's so humbling and amazing.

— John Darnielle

The inside of the Trace Italian, of course, does not exist. A player can get close enough to see it: it shines in the new deserts of Kansas, gleaming in the sun or starkly rising from the winter cold. The rock walls that protect it meet in points around it, one giving way to another, for days on end. But the dungeons into which you'll fall as you work through the pathways to its gates number in the low hundreds, and if you actually get into the entry hall, there are a few hundred more sub-dungeons before you'll actually reach somewhere that's truly safe. Technically, it's possible to get to the last room in the final chamber of the Trace Italian, but no one will ever do it. No one will ever live that long.

— John Darnielle

Their boots were black and shiny and your treasures gleamed like stars, Bones from deep down in the fertile crescent.

— John Darnielle

There are so many different kinds of ghosts.

— John Darnielle

The wind comes across the plains not howling but singing. It's the difference between this wind and its big-city cousins: the full-throated wind of the plains has leeway to seek out the hidden registers of its voice. Where immigrant farmers planted windbreaks a hundred and fifty years ago. It keens in protest; where the young corn shoots up, it whispers as it passes, crossing field after field in its own time, following eastward trends but in no hurry to find open water. You can't usually see it in paintings, but it's an important part of the scenery.

— John Darnielle

To the left, just past the painting, on the other side of the hall, is the bathroom, the sort of open door that if cameras found it as they passed through the house in a horror movie would trigger a blast of synthesizers.

— John Darnielle

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream Don't expect him to thank or forgive you.

— John Darnielle

Who knows the secrets of anybody’s heart.

— John Darnielle

You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like.

— John Darnielle

Your intelligence doesn't override your desire to destroy yourself.

— John Darnielle