Цитаты из книги Американські боги

"It's an ancient African herbal remedy," he said. "It's made of ground willow bark, things like that.""Like aspirin?""Yup," said Mr. Nancy. "Just like that." From the bottom of the trunk he produced a giant economy-sized bottle of generic aspirin. He unscrewed the top, and shook out a couple of white pills. "Here."

At first, he did not dream. There was just the comforting darkness.

They crossed the border into Florida, and Shadow saw his first palm tree. He wondered if they'd planted it there on purpose, at the border, just so that you knew you were in Florida now.

"Those helicopters," he said. "The ones that took away the bodies, and the injured.""What about them?""Who sent them? Where did they come from?""You shouldn't worry yourself about that. They're like valkyries

Mr. Nancy had sat up front in the passenger seat and, from time to time, and with a pained expression on his face, offered to drive. Shadow always said no.

The storms had cleared. The air felt fresh and clean and new once more.

"Hi, Laura. What happened here?""Nothing," she said. "Just stuff.

She looked dead, but then, Shadow was almost used to that by now.

A spider the size of a rottweiler scuttled heavily toward him, on seven legs; its cluster of eyes glowed faintly.
<…>When the spider got close enough, it said, in Mr. Nancy's voice, "That was a good job. Proud of you. You done good, kid.»
"Thank you," said Shadow.

"Somewhere in there-maybe fifty years ago, maybe a hundred, they put a plan into motion, a plan to create a reserve of power they could both tap into.

The buffalo voice said, You are doing just fine.Shadow thought, Damn right. I came back from the dead this morning. After that, everything else should be a piece of cake.

Reality was thin here.

"But the battle will bring him back. As the battle will bring me back for good. I'm a ghost, and he's a corpse, but we've still won. The game was rigged."

"And do you also feed on death?" asked Shadow, looking at Loki.Loki shook his head, wearily."No, of course not," said Shadow. "You feed on chaos."Loki smiled at that, a brief pained smile, and orange flames danced in his eyes, and flickered like burning lace beneath his pale skin.

"We couldn't have done it without you," said Wednesday, from the corner of Shadow's eye. "I'd been with so many women…""You needed a son," said Shadow.

That implies that I was betraying the old gods for the new. Which was not what we were doing.""Not at all," whispered Loki."I can see that," said Shadow. "You two weren't betraying either side. You were betraying both sides."
<…>
"You wanted a massacre. You needed a blood sacrifice. A sacrifice of gods."
<…>
"And why the hell not? I've been trapped in this damned land for almost twelve hundred years. My blood is thin. I'm hungry."


"And you two feed on death," said Shadow.

"It's just a two-man con," said Shadow. "Like the bishop with the diamond necklace and the cop who arrests him. Like the guy with the fiddle, and the guy who wants to buy the fiddle. Two men, who appear to be on opposite sides, playing the same game."

"It was crooked. But it was the only game in town."

You took everybody's attention, so they never looked at the hand with the coin in it. It's called misdirection. And there's power in the sacrifice of a son-

His skin prickled.