“At the end of life death is a departure; but at life's beginning a departure is death.”

“What do you mean, Araluen? Death?"Halt made a careless gesture. "The usual, I suppose: the sudden cessation of life. The end of it all. Departure for a happier place. Or oblivion, depending upon your personal beliefs.”

“Someone who loved night arrivals and dark departures, for the hell, the fun, the death of it?”

“For death begins with life's first breath, And life begins at touch of death.”

“I once feared death. It is said that death begins with the absence of life. And life begins when death is no longer feared. I have stared death in the eye and survived.”

“Meditation upon death does not teach one how to die; it does not make the departure more easy, but ease is not what I seek. Beloved boy, so willful and brooding, your sacrifice will have enriched not my life but my death....Centuries as yet unborn within the dark womb of time would pass by thousands over that tomb without restoring life to him, but likewise without adding to his death, and without changing the fact that he had been.”