“Whilst the wolflets bayed, A grave was made, And then with the strokes of a silver spade, It was filled to make a mound. And for two cold days and three long nights, The father tended that holy plot; And stayed by where his wife was laid, In the grave within the ground.”

“but the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade”

“Los Angeles didn't get like this often. He hated it when it did. And this time it was holding on. It had been brutal at the cemetery three weeks ago. His father's nine widows had looked ready to drop. The savage light had leached the color from the flowers. The savage heat had got at the mound of earth from the grave even under its staring green blanket of fake grass. He'd stayed to watch the workmen fill the grave. The earth was dry. Even the sharp walls of the grave were dry. What the hell was he doing remembering that?”

“I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two.”

“When your mother is the grave and your father is a lightning bolt it tends to make you kind of horny. And death has a way of removing one's inhibitions.”

“If there was no way into God, I would never have laid in this grave of a body for so long.”