Loss is the hardest thing, I said. But it's also the teacher that's the most difficult to ignore.

That was one of the most fundamental and sacred duties good friends and families performed for one another! They tended the flame of memory, so no one’s death meant an immediate vanishment from the world; in some sense the deceased would live on after their passing, at least as long as those who loved them lived. Such memories were an essential weapon against the chaos of life and death, a way to ensure some continuity from generation to generation, an order of endorsement and meaning.

Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation. Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again. Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around. Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn.

His blue eyes were seas where sorrow sailed.

Don't tell me what's necessary, you presumptupus pup. What's necessary is whatever I wish to do, regardless of how unnecessary it might be.

Living in the modern age, death for virtue is the wage. So it seems in darker hours. Evil wins, kindness cowers. Ruled by violence and vice we all stand upon thin ice. Are we brave or are we mice, here upon such thin, thin ice? Dare we linger, dare we skate? Dare we laugh or celebrate, knowing we may strain the ice? Preserve the ice at any price?

The only thing we can't buy more of is time." she said. "And dodo birds. We can't buy any more of them. they're extinct. And dinosaurs.