The living do not see eternity, just as they don't see Everlost, but they sense both in ways that they don't even know. They don't feel the Everlost barrier set across the Mississippi River, and yet no one had ever dared to draw city boundaries that straddle both sides of its waters. The living do not see Afterlights, and yet everyone has had times when they've felt a presence near them - sometimes comforting, sometimes not - but always strong enough to make one turn around and look over one's shoulder.

does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?

How easy is murder when one calls it by a different name? How much easier is it for the conscience to condone "reaping" than "killing"-and when one knows that death isn't the end, does it stop the killing hand for fear of retribution, or does it simply make it easier to kill, because, if life continues, how can murder be murder at all?

Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.

I'm scared," he says."I know," says the nurse."I want you all to go to Hell.""That's natural.

How can you do the right thing when you can't figure out what that is? When all you have before you are choices in various shades of wrong?