“I was realizing, for the first time, that everything goes on, turns gray, is ruined in the living. That there is no end to our story until death comes and the body decays...”

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.”

“Death, the inevitable end of everything, confronted him for the first time with irresistible force.”

“When you close the book, does the story end? No! That's such a bland way to read. Every story goes on forever in our imaginations, and its characters live on.”

“The story of my recent life.' I like that phrase. It makes more sense than 'the story of my life', because we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality- and in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization.”

“There really is only one ending to any story. Human life ends in death. Until then, it keeps going and gets complicated and there's loss. Everything involves loss; every relationship ends in one way or another.”