How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"He says there are strange things in the world. Forty years ago, a peasant from El Graniones brought him a lizard that screamed as though it were a woman." (Preface.46)
Right up front, in the preface, 'Salem's Lot is assuring you that the supernatural is really real. Really. Okay, we get it! Lizards scream, vampires vamp, and Shmoop's Internet laughs like a hyena if you don't keep a close eye on it.
Quote #2
A house was a house—boards and hinges and nails and sills. There was no reason, really no reason, to feel that each splintered crack was exhaling its own chalky aroma of evil. That was just plain stupid thinking. Ghosts? He didn't believe in ghosts. Not after Nam. (4.165)
Hank Peters is getting scared by the Marsten House. He contrasts ghosts with the time he spent in Vietnam—war is real (and evil). Houses are just houses. Hank's unwillingness to believe is so great he doesn't even quite believe it when he sees Ralphie's clothes in the basement. Here, as throughout the novel, belief is the first line of defense; disbelief gets everybody in trouble.
Quote #3
Of course monsters existed; they were the men with their fingers on the thermonuclear triggers in six countries, the hijackers, the mass murders, the child molesters. But not this. One knows better. The mark of the devil on a woman's breast is only a mole… Some clergymen had proclaimed that even God, that venerable white warlock, was dead. (7.196)
Father Callahan here toys with the idea of that God might be a superstition. This is not far from how the novel treats God: as a kind of supernatural whammy that can be deployed against the forces of darkness. Theologically, 'Salem's Lot is kind of a mess, though no one's here for a theology lesson. Still, it's no wonder Callahan comes to such a bad end.