“There’s no spirit or soul. I will be dead. Get that through your thick head. I’ll be dead. And I live, in quotation marks, in my children, in my DNA, in my books, in my reputation. It’s as simple as that.”

“I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.”

“I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind.”

“In The Land of Poetry and Fighting, Efficiency rules the throne. I try to live here, so I shave my head because hair is dead and dead is inefficient.”

“I cupped my hands over my ears. “No, no, no. Get out. Get dead.”

“In a few hours, I’m going to be banished to the surface, my belongings raffled off as novelty items and my living space given to someone else—my reputation destroyed. I’d rather have your head than your soul at this point in my illustrious career.” - Al”