What need, Dunstan wondered, could someone have of the storm-filled eggshells?

America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe just about anything could happen in America.

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.

Ray Bradbury was not ahead of his time. He was perfectly of his time, and more than that: he created his time and left his mark on the time that followed.

When I was a kid, we actually lived in a house that had been divided in two at one point, which meant that one room in our house opened up onto a brick wall. And I was convinced all I had to do was just open it the right way and it wouldn't be a brick wall. So I'd sidle over to the door and I'd pull it open.

For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.