“Moments after his death, an event he had failed to notice, Gordon Small sought new employment”

“Gordon Edgley's sudden death came as a shock to everyone - not least himself. One moment he was in his study, seven words into the twenty-fifth sentence of the final chapter of his new book, And the Darkness Rained upon Them, and the next he was dead. A tragic loss, his mind echoed numbly as he slipped away.”

“I believe he died this way on purpose. I believe he wanted no chilling moments, no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it, the way he had been haunted by his mother's death-notice telegram or by his father's corpse in the city morgue.”

“He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.In place of death there was light.”

“His death had been as futile as his life. He died ingloriously, of a stupid disease, failing once more, even at the end, to accomplish anything.”

“The place between his thighs seemed to him as round and full as a small Virginia smoked ham. He had to get rid of it, before anyone else noticed it.”