“Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely. She that knew not where to hide,Is gone again like a jeweled fish from the hand, Is lost on every side.Mute,mute, I make way to the garden, Thither where she last was seen;The heavy foot of the frost is on the flags there, Where her light step has been. Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely,Gone again on every side,Lost again like a shining fish from the hand Into the shadowy tide.”

“But the fevers are on me now, the virus mad to ravage my last fifty T cells. It's hard to keep the memory at full dazzle, with so much loss to mock it. Roger gone, Craig gone, Cesar gone, Stevie gone. And this feeling that I'm the last one left, in a world where only the ghosts still laugh. But at least they're the ghosts of full-grown men, proof that all of us got that far, free of the traps and the lies. And from that moment on the brink of summer's end, no one would ever tell me again that men like me couldn't love.”

“Moments, when lost, can't be found again. They're just gone.”

“I am gone tomorrow. And there and gone again by the time you read this.”

“With every shovelful, it's like we're traveling back in time. Where no one has gone for centuries...or maybe never gone before.”

“song of elli (old age)"What is plucked will grow again,What is slain lives on,What is stolen will remainWhat is gone is gone...What is sea-born dies on land,Soft is trod upon.What is given burns the hand -What is gone is gone...Here is there, and high is low;All may be undone.What is true, no two men know -What is gone is gone...Who has choices need not choose.We must, who have none.We can love but what we lose -What is gone is gone.”