“I seem to walk on a transparent surface and see beneath me all the bones and wrecks and tentacles that will eventually claim me: in other words, old age, incapacity, loneliness, death of others & myself...”

“The future seems so crowded to me. All I see is me, me, me, me, me and a million other clones of myself.”

“The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.”

“I guess I just couldn't see standing there -- alive, talking, thinking, breathing, being -- one second, and dead the next. It really bothered me. Death by violence isn't the same as dying any other way, accident or disease or old age. It just ain't the same.”

“He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.”

“I kept asking myself if I felt different, if I was different. The answer was always yes. I was no longer nothing… How odd, I thought; it had taken my mother’s death, Father Quinel’s murder, and the desire of others to kill me to claim a life of my own.”