...if more people had been organ donors, unwinding never would have happened...but people like to keep what's theirs, even after they're dead.

A family is a collection of strangers trapped in a web of DNA and forced to cope.

Sure, when you're in the midst of your own suffering, it's easy to convince yourself that you're no good—but we are all tested in this life...The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.

I smell fear, he said with a quiet intensity. But not nearly enough.

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.

A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.

Revelations are never convenient, and always annoying.