“I lie back on my pillow and think back to that day. The day that I fell for my wife.”

“I flopped back onto my pillows. I wanted to begin loathing the new day in comfort.”

“I lie down on my bed, my back to the window, and the tears finally arrive, running down my face, into my ears, onto my pillow. I lie there for a long time, for hours maybe, and right as I'm about to finally drift to sleep I think I hear the flutter of Christian's wings as he flies away.”

“Then came nights when, lying awake beside my final wife, I would spend too much time putting my finger on what was wrong. I was wearing the finger out. What was wrong was very simple. Sometimes her life and mine fell on the same day.”

“One day I want to be so wealthy I can say to my wife, “let’s take a drive—to the end of our driveway and back” and have that be a two-hour round trip.”

“If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.”