“A man dies, girl, he isn’t any more, least not down here. Respect and all that crap doesn’t deserve the dead; it just makes the living feel better. The dead one, maybe he is somewhere else– maybe all he needs to be somewhere else is to believe he will be somewhere else. I won’t deny a man his belief, and I don’t know any more’n you about souls and all that stuff. But I know this: Speaking good or bad about something that isn’t anymore is a bloody waste of time. I can’t feature Saint Peter sitting up there saying: ‘Hey, Adam, there’s folks bad-mouthing you down there. What’d you do to merit that?”

− Peter Benchley −