“He imagined the scene at the gates of heaven to be not unlike that at the finish line of a long and grueling marathon: everyone high-fiving, hugging, collapsing, elated that it’s over, yes, it’s finally over, pouring cups of water over one another’s heads and saying, Holy shit, dude, that was fucking brutal. I am never doing that again.”

“He took the diary from Mother's hand and turned it over. The heartbreaking something, he read, of a tragic whatever.”

“You never see a lion crucifyng another lion. You never see a bear just randomly murdering salmon for anything besides food; bears don't form armies, invade rivers, tear the heads off male salmon, rape the female salmon, and enslave their salmon children.It is finished, to Kugel, sounded a hell of a lot like Fuck all of you motherfuckers.”

“I'm down here, trying to live, trying to deal with the real world, while you're hiding, bitching, fucking everyone's shit up but your own, so shut up, just shut the fuck up. Thirty-two million copies, thirty-two million copies, that's what you got for your pain. What do I get for mine? What does anyone get for theirs? Nothing, not a fucking thing, they get another goddamned day of it and another goddamned day of it after that, so just shut up, will you? Will you just shut up?”

“I kind of like it up here, Kugel said. It's got a certain fatalistic charm, a certain je ne sais fucked.”

“Kugel awoke early the next morning, turning his face from the harsh rays of intruding sunlight that stretched across the room like some goddamned thing that stretches across some other goddamned thing.Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It's a giant ball of fire, kids. It's rage and fury. Whatever it's doing, it isn't fucking smiling.”

“Expecting hell, we're ill prepared for heaven.”