“After the service, a crowd gathered by the grave. It is not a pauper's grave. It is the sort of grave that ordinary people dream of: under the boughs of a horse chestnut, in the company of yews and flocks of rooks, in a Norman churchyard. Beyond the aged wall that borders this blissful cemetery the hills and copses rise like waves.”

“Why not rise from the grave and terrorize a little instead of staying buried and dead in the cemetery?”

“The atmosphere is always very grave when I walk into a cemetery.”

“Death borders upon our birth and our cradle stands in the grave.”

“Los Angeles didn't get like this often. He hated it when it did. And this time it was holding on. It had been brutal at the cemetery three weeks ago. His father's nine widows had looked ready to drop. The savage light had leached the color from the flowers. The savage heat had got at the mound of earth from the grave even under its staring green blanket of fake grass. He'd stayed to watch the workmen fill the grave. The earth was dry. Even the sharp walls of the grave were dry. What the hell was he doing remembering that?”

“Silas didn't plan on going to the grave anytime soon, and he wasn't going to be a pauper when he did.”