“Death did this to people: making cowards, scapegoats, preachers and mourners of the living; while the dead – ignoble or not – became objects of respect for achieving something before the rest of us.”

“The power of "can't": The word "can't" makes strong people weak, blinds people who can see, saddens happy people, turns brave people into cowards, robs a genius of their brilliance, causes rich people to think poorly, and limits the achievements of that great person living inside us all.”

“Taro taught me that people respect spirit, but even cowards don't respect cowards.”

“He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.”

“Paradise is being able to say at that (second before our death) moment: "I made some mistakes, but I wasn't a coward. I lived life and did what I had to do.”

“Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.”