“It had occurred to him that if the undead don't realize that they are dead, he might easily be one of them himself.”

“He had followed the trail left by a dead man. It was only now that he realized it might lead only to a grave.”

“There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.”

“Once someone's dead you can't make them undead.”

“He thought of trying to explain something he had recently noticed about himself: that if anyone insulted him, or one of his friends, he didn't really mind--or not much, anyway. Whereas if anyone insulted a novel, a story, a poem that he loved, something visceral and volcanic occurred within him. He wasn't sure what this might mean--except perhaps that he had got life and art mixed up, back to front, upside down.”

“While he was waiting, leaning on the counter at a coffee place, he remembered the dream he'd had the night before about Antonio Jones, who had been dead for several years now. As before, he asked himself what Jones could have died of, and the one answer that occurred to him was old age. One day, walking down some street in Brooklyn, Antonio Jones had felt tired, sat down on the sidewalk, and a second later stopped existing.”