“Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.”

“Irony is finally you found the perfect one, but there's so many obstacles to make the perfect one yours.”

“Perfection seems sterile; it is final, no mystery in it; it's a product of an assembly line.”

“Underneath me, Sam Grest - who'd been my friend and saved my life - lay perfectly still and slipped further and further into the final sleep of an unfair and horrible death.”

“All life is death. You don't fool yourself about this anymore. You slash at the perfect canvas with strokes of paint and replace the perfect picture of your imagination with the reality of what you are capable of. From death, and sorrow, and compromise, you create. This is what it means, you finally realize, to be alive. ("The Chambered Fruit")”

“Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.”