The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory. The living, thank heaven, retain the ability to surprise and to disappoint. - Van Houten

He missed his imagined future.

We just did an awesome job of not dying.

But there's so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on.

. . . Endlessness is a really strange idea in a universe that is defined by its endings.

I like this world. I like drinking champagne. I like not smoking. I like Dutch people speaking Dutch.

All good American literature is always interested in people who are ambiguously heroic, like Gatsby.