“If your twin was dead, were you still a twin?”

“When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands--the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper--if you've promised your dying mother--then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin--the guy who beat the biochemical rap.”

“You sit around feelin' sorry for yourself and you're dead. Sittin' on your ass can get to be a disease worse than what you got.”

“All the dead bolts, pulled shades and hidden knives in the world couldn't protect you from the truth.”

“Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.”

“This was what could happen to you: you could end up this far from where you thought you were going.”

“...there was no shorthand for "I'm sorry." You were obliged to speak those two words.”