Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction.

Heaven would never be heaven without you.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet’s intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it's everything when it's anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? (“Disappearing Act”)

If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.

A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliché.

Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well—as though they’d been fulfilled. I saw that what transpires in the mind is just as real as any flesh and blood occurrence. What had only been imagination in life, now became tangible, each fantasy a full reality. I lived them all—while, at the same time, standing to the side, a witness to their, often, intimate squalor. A witness cursed with total objectivity.