When a young writer comes up to me with an ambitious idea for a 20-book series, I usually tell him to maybe try something smaller to start off with.

Could a man's heart, his soul, perish and yet leave him walking and talking as if alive?

There are things you can't walk away from. Not if you want to live with yourself afterward.

Mort drove one of those little hybrid cars that, when not running on gasoline, was fueled by idealism. It was made out of crepe paper and duct tape and boasted a computer system that looked like it could have run the NYSE and NORAD, with enough attention left over to play tic-tac-toe. Or possibly Global Thermonuclear War.

Here's where I ask why don't you spend your time doing something safer and more boring. Like maybe administering suppositories to rabid gorillas.

All of those faeries and duels and mad queens and so on, and no one quoted old Billy Shakespeare. Not even once.

Souls, I said. I mean, you always wonder if they're real. Even if you believe in them, you still have to wonder: Is my existence just this body? Is there really something more? Do I really have a soul?Uriel's smile blossomed again. You've got it backward, Harry, he said. You are a soul. You have a body.