“Well, you have to accept this.Check it out.You know how when someone dies, people are all sad and stuff?""Yeah?""Well,why are they sad?"His face scrunched up quizzically and then brightened."Because they won't be able to see their loved ones again. They'll miss them.""No!" she shouted, suddenly standing and pacing like a detective delivering the evidence to a room full of suspects."It's because they have to rely on faith that they will see that person again in heaven or..." Her eyes drifted toward the sky."Wherever. When someone close to you dies, your faith is at its shakiest. Even if you're an atheist."He cocked his head to the side,"How do you figure?""It just happens. Death causes people to reevaluate their beliefs. It brings up questions you don't want to ask;it creates anxiety.”

“He was ridiculously gorgeous, even with bed-head--maybe because of it. It made her sick--like violently, ill. He could at least be polite and have some scars, a third nipple, or a low-hanging ear on the side of his head.But no. He was perfect and adorable and in her bed. And, oh yeah, she felt like punching the shit out of him.”

“We work so hard to avoid death because life is precious. That is why we clutch to this life so tightly. That's why we have so much anxiety, even anger, when something threatens us or our loved ones. But here's the contradiction: If you work TOO HARD to avoid death, then you're not going to have time to feel how precious life really is. You won't be able to feel it. You'll know it in your head but not in your heart.”

“She never saw the point of making fun of strangers – how could you possibly know enough about them to hit below the belt?”

“This way of behaving, this way of feeling, so hysterical, so sad, when someone has died, I don't like at all and would like to avoid. It's not as if the whole thing has not happened before, it's not as if people have not been dying all along and each person left behind is the first person ever left behind in the world. What to make of it? Why can’t everybody just get used to it? People are born and they just can’t go on and on, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it’s so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you could survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go.”

“Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.”

“Damn it all to hell and back again, you know very well that was a setup. You bloody well know I couldn't put my hands on her.""Yeah, yeah, sure, sure." Eve shrugged off her coat, tossed it aside. "I know a setup when I see it, and I know your face, ace. I didn't see desire on it, I saw annoyance.""Is that so? Is that bloody well so? Well, if you knew it was just what it was, why did you sucker punch me?""Mostly?" She turned, cocked a hip. "Because you're a man."Eyes narrowed on her face, he tried to stanch the blood with the back of his hand. "And do you have any sort of idea just how often I might expect your fist in my goddamn face because of my bleeding DNA?”