“It seems reckless, even perverse, to spend so much time and effort nurturing such a deadly thing...Ernie and Pooka seek to understand death and to master their fear of it by domesticating it in the form of the brugmansia.”

“We spend nine months in a nurturing darkness before we're born, and we aspire to the highest of all places when we die.”

“Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.”

“Some argued that the youth of today were poorly educated and insufficiently industrious, but one of them had sought to validate his generation by spending considerable time and effort chiseling an obscene word in the concrete picnic table, and he had spelled it correctly.”

“Too many of us die without knowing transcendent joy, in part because we pursue one form or another of materialism. We seek meaning in possessions, in pursuit of cosmic justice for earthly grievances, in the acquisition of power over others. But one day Death reveals that life is wasted in these cold passions, because zealotry of any kind precludes love except of the thing that is idolized.”

“If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don't have to think too much about your own character motivations.”

“These days, people spent too much time striving to understand their feelings - and then ended up with none that were genuine.”