“Seafood poisoning, a cigarette lit as the person is drifting off to sleep and that sets fire to the sheets or, worse, to a woollen blanket; a slip in the shower—the back of the head—the bathroom door locked; a lightning bolt that splits in two a tree planted in a broad avenue, a tree which, as it falls, crushes or slices off the head of a passer-by, possibly a foreigner; dying in your socks, or at the barber’s, still wearing a voluminous smock, or in a whorehouse or at the dentist’s; or eating fish and getting a bone stuck in your throat, choking to death like a child whose mother isn’t there to save him by sticking a finger down his throat; or dying in the middle of shaving, with one cheek still covered in foam, half-shaven for all eternity, unless someone notices and finishes the job off out of aesthetic pity; not to mention life’s most ignoble, hidden moments that people seldom mention once they are out of adolescence, simply because they no longer have an excuse to do so, although, of course, there are always those who insist on making jokes about them, never very funny jokes.”

“Get moving. We need to find that stag so I don’t have to chop your head off.”“I never said you had to chop my head off,” I grumbled, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and stumbling after him.“Run you through with a sword, then? Firing squad?”“I was thinking something quieter, like maybe a nice poison.”“All you said was that I had to kill you. You didn’t say how.”I stuck my tongue out at his back, but I was glad to see him so energized, and I suppose it was a good thing that he could joke about it all. At least, I hoped he was joking.”

“So let me get this straight,” Carter said. “The two guys you liked—one who was dying and one who was off-limits because he’s a god—are now one guy, who isn’t dying and isn’t off-limits. And you’re complaining.”

“Our riches, being in our brains, die with us... Unless of course someone chops off our head, in which case, we won't need them anyway.”

“Only a friend or a giraffe would stick his neck out for you. But only a giraffe would eat all the leaves off your tree so he could peek in your second story bedroom window.”

“I had a dream once that Boughton and I were down at the river looking around in the shallows for something or other - when we were boys it would have been tadpoles - and my grandfather stalked out of the trees in that furious way he had, scooped his hat full of water, and threw it, so as sheet of water came sailing toward us, billowing in the air like a veil, and fell down over us. Then he put his hat back on his head and stalked off into the trees again and left us standing there in that glistening river, amazed at ourselves and shining like the apostles. I mention his because it seems to me transformations just that abrupt do occur in this life, and they occur unsought and unawaited, and they beggar your hopes and your deserving. This came to my mind as I was reflecting on the day I first say your mother, that blessed, rainy Pentecost”