“We call a cancer bad, they would say, because it kills a man; but you might just as well call a successful surgeon bad because he kills a cancer.”

“Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.”

“I’m cancer, Luce. And not the kind that you can kill off with radiation. The kind that kills you in the end.”

“Claire "The Elysian Fields Guest House? Why didn't he just call it the Vestibule to Hell?"Dean "Because that would be bad for business?"From Summon the Keeper”

“Death is a cure to a lot of things like cancer and disease and happiness, although I'm not sure anyone would want to be cured of happiness. And some might not want to be cured from cancer if that cure means death, because then they aren't alive anymore and being alive with cancer is something.”

“If I'd been burned alive because of bad grades, my parents would have killed me, especially my father, who meant well but was just a little too gung ho for my taste.”