“Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent.”

“That's why people take vacations. No to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things.”

“Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing”

“Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.”

“Opportunity, adventure, sunsets, dusty death.”

“We're a silver gleaming death machine!”

“When I think of highly plotted novels I think of detective fiction or mystery fiction, the kind of work that always produces a few dead bodies. But these bodies are basically plot points, not worked-out characters. The book's plot either moves inexorably toward a dead body of flows directly from it, and the more artificial the situation the better. Readers can play off their fears by encountering the death experience in a superficial way. A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot, makes it less fearful by containing it in a kind of game format. [from an interview with DeCurtis]”