Sharing a room with a cadaver is only mildly different from being in a room alone. They are the same sort of company as people across from you on subways or in airport lounges, there but not there. Your eyes keep going back to them, for lack of anything more interesting to look at, and then you feel bad for staring.

Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars. Let's go out and play.

It would be especially comforting to believe that I have the answer to the question, What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that-the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness, persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my laptop?

The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.

In my whole life, I've never vomited from seeing something disgusting. Does it really even happen, outside of movies and TV? I believe it may be a myth.

Sexual desire is a state not unlike hunger.

Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.