“He couldn’t look back at the children. He couldn’t think of it. All he could do was watch the eyes of his wife.He pulled her to him, her body soft, her skin warm. She was life, she was his. He took her lips and tasted his freedom once more. The subtle tenderness. The hope hidden in joined breath. He took it into himself. Soaking in the peace that came with it.And even as the rustling began he felt still, he felt calm. Scratching and scrapping within the stones, and the rustle of wings. But all Eli knew was the nature of love.”

“whats here a cup closed in my true loves hand poisin i see hath been his timeless end. oh churl drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after. i will kiss thy lips some poisin doth hang on them, to help me die with a restorative. thy lips are warm.yea noise then ill be brief oh happy dagger this is thy sheath. there rust and let me die.”

“I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.”

“I used to love youI still doSo SelfishI love the old youThe you that didnt shoot drugs…The you that didnt get beat on by menYou laugh in my face and call me a foolBut its trueI still love youSometimes,I can see the old youWhen your eyes flashWhen you almost look alive”

“I was tired of being me.”

“Self-destruction would be a brief, almost autoerotic free-fall into a great velvet darkness.”

“They don’t make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above the ground. I guess it’s partly because it must be eisier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can’t be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It’s where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.Maybe it says somthing about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Mabye it helps us push death’s shadow back from our lives.I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?Probably that I overanalyze things.”

“What is a man’s life but a prelude to his death? And what is death but a long sleep, a most welcome forgetfulness.”

“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.”

“Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.”

“When you have dogs, you witness their uncomplaining acceptance of suffering, their bright desire to make the most of life in spite of the limitations of age and disease, their calm awareness of the approaching end when their final hours come. They accept death with a grace that I hope I will one day be brave enough to muster.”

“Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, ‘I’ll be dead,’ you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul – it was a consequence of grammar.”

“She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her.”

“Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.”

“The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.”