“He dreams he's with a very sad kid and they're in a graveyard digging some dead guy's head up and it's really important, like Continental-Emergency important, and Gately's the best digger but he's wicked hungry, like irresistibly hungry, and he's eating with both hands out of huge economy-size bags of corporate snacks so he can't really dig, while it gets later and later and the sad kid is trying to scream at Gately that the important thing was buried in the guy's head and to divert the Continental Emergency to start digging the guy's head up before it's too late, but the kid moves his mouth but nothing comes out and Joelle van D. appears with wings and no underwear and asks if they knew him, the dead guy with the head, and Gately starts talking about knowing him even though deep down he feels panic because he's got no idea who they're talking about, while the sad kid holds something terrible up by the hair and makes the face of somebody shouting in panic: TOO LATE.”

“So, I said I thought the magazine was trying to make him a hero, but then later somebody might dig up something to make him seem like less than a person. And I didn't know why because to me he is just a guy who writes songs that a lot of people like, and I thought that was enough for everyone involved.”

“Who's the other kid in the photo?' he asked. 'The sandy-haired guy.'Annabeth's expression tightened. Touchy subject.'That's Luke,' she said. 'He's dead now.”

“I've been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you're gold when you're a kid, like green. When you're a kid everything's new, dawn. It's just when you get used to everything that it's day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That's gold. Keep that way, it's a good way to be.”

“Who is this Marlowe guy anyway? He's an ass. Threw him out. Threatened to have Ysmi sit on him if he returned.Why are there two severed heads rolling around the house? Cats tried to eat one. Mostly prevented.Headless guy is in hallway broom closet with head that I think is his.”

“This was the kid who used to toddle over to my bed at 6 o’ clock in the morning every weekend morning to pull on my blankets so I’d get up and watch cartoons with him. This was the kid who once made me play Hungry Hungry Hippos for an hour straight, until I thought my hands were going to fall off from slamming down those dumb little levers to make the hippos’ heads move. This was the kid who had spent an entire days at a time begging me to play Chutes and Ladders with him. And now he was feeling too sick to play with me.”