“I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.”

“We live in such an amazing World and we don't even see it.It's clouded by hate, betrayal and death.When do we stop all of that and begin living?, when do we realise that we're made for more than this?, our ability is far more powerful than we think!.”

“ 'Till America has learned to love literature not as an amusement, not as a mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of a people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.' ”

“So am I dead? How many kinds of living and dead and living dead and dead living had I been in just these few months, these few days, after the stasis of plain old human living and dying? I deserved some kind of existential medal.”

“Literature can teach us how to live before we live, and how to die before we die. I believe that writing is practice for death, and for every (other) transformation human beings encounter.”

“I was generally in favor of segregation of the dead and the living.”