Things change when you're not in danger anymore.

All that happens when your dreams come true is a slow, melting realization that it wasn't what you thought.

That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays

What she mostly wanted, he learned, was the same thing many people want--someone to notice she was there.

You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.

And I suppose tapes are a desperate attempt to steal something from Death's suitcase.

Did you feel guilty cursing God--you, of all people?' No,' he said. 'Because even in doing so, I was recognizing there was a greater power than me.' He paused. And that is how I began to heal.