So often the monsters that crowd our minds are nothing more than the strange and thoroughly alien progeny of our own fearful fantasies.

Afterward I told his widow, "Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.' I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry." He did not say what the best way was.

I didn't save you," he whispers, lips tickling my eyelashes. "You saved me.

I'm one, too," he said. "What?" He spit a wad of blood and mucus into the dirt. "A virgin." What a shock. "What makes you think I'm a virgin?" I asked. "You wouldn't have hit me if you weren't.

Have you fallen in love, Will Henry?" "That's stupid." "What is? Love, or my question?" "I don't know." "You don't know? You've tried that trick once. What do you suppose it will work better the second time?" "I don't love her. She bothers me." "You have just defined the very thing you denied.

Human beings are remarkably resilient. When you think about it, our species has been teetering upon the edge of the existential cliff since Hiroshima. In short, we endure.

That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear.