“Dark hills at evening in the west,Where sunset hovers like a soundOf golden horns that sang to restOld bones of warriors underground,Far now from all the bannered waysWhere flash the legions of the sun,You fade--as if the last of daysWere fading, and all wars were done.”

“Noah Calhoun watched the fading sun sink lower from the wrap around porch of his plantation-style home.He liked to sit here in the evenings, especially after working hard all day.”

“I end not far from my going forthBy picking the faded blueOf the last remaining aster flowerTo carry again to you.”

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

“He mistrusted all of that. He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death. He slept little and he slept poorly. He dreamt of walking in a flowering wood where birds flew before them he and the child and the sky was aching blue but he was learning how to wake himself from just such siren worlds. Lying there in the dark with the uncanny taste of a peach from some phantom orchard fading in his mouth. He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would all be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.”

“All around me darkness gathers, Fading is the sun that shone, We must speak of other matters, You can be me when I'm goneFlowers gathered in the morning,Afternoon they blossom on,Still are withered in the evening,You can be me when I'm gone.”