Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit.

I don’t want your candor. I want your soul in a silver thimble.

Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent.

There were moments when she wasn't talking so much as fading into time, dropping back into some funnelled stretch of recent past.

There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist? (155)

He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation.

[I]n the American soul there is a lonely individual standing in a vast landscape. 
He is either on a horse or driving a car, depending, and either way he’s carrying a gun. 
This is one of the essential images in American mythology.