American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel

“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”

“Hey,” said Shadow. “Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are.” The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes. “Say ‘Nevermore,’” said Shadow. “Fuck you,” said the raven.

“Lady Liberty,” said Wednesday. “Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner. In this case, a Frenchwoman, although, in deference to American sensibilities, the French covered up her magnificent bosom on that statue they presented to New York. Liberty,” he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom fl

“Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit-card and freeway, of internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with th

“Liberty,” boomed Wednesday, as they walked to his car, “is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.” “Yeah?” said Shadow. “Quoting,” said Wednesday. “Quoting someone French. That’s who they have a statue to, in their New York harbor: a bitch, who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbril. Hold your torch as high as you want to,

But it was a dream, and in dreams, sometimes, you have no choices: either there are no decisions to be made, or they were made for you long before ever the dream began.

The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to the casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They want to know they matter. They may brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secre

“You’re fucked up, mister. But you’re cool.” “I believe that’s what they call the human condition,” said Shadow. “Thanks for the company.”

Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So, none of this is happening. Such things could not occur in this day and age. Never a word of it is literally true, although it all happened, and the next thing that happened, happened like this: