You want to know what evil is? Evil's a gun. Evil's a creep who puts bullets in it. Evil's a tree that's been split in half by lightning. It isn't some "thing". It's everything, turned bad. A kid's bicycle is okay, but when you see it turned over and blood on the ground nearby then it's something else.

If it was as logical as that, I wouldn't continue to feel as bad as I do. I know what you're saying, and you're absolutely right in a way. But logic and rationality only go so far. Then you know what happens? Ha! Then your old heart adds its two cents and everything reasonable goes right-out-the-window.

Our dreams are like the messes children make in a kitchen when no one is around to yell at them. Ketchup, an egg or two, chocolate sauce -- all thrown into a blender and zipped around. Where's the wheat germ and look at that tin of clams! Throw 'em in! A little from real life, a few daydreams, a lot from God-knows-where, and voila! There was the movie for the night.

[...]life has a very bad case of acne which it has no desire to lose, because that would mean it couldn't look in the mirror fifty times a day and feel so sorry for itself.

Death doesn't make you sad -- it makes you empty. That's what's so bad about it. All of your charms and beliefs and funny habits fall fast through a big black hole, and suddenly you know thev're gone because just as suddenly, there's nothing at all left inside.

I remembered the drawing Lincoln had sent of the man with the flower in his neck. A rose in the throat. Wasn't that what was happening here? Choking on life's good things if they went down the wrong tube, the wrong way? Roses are meant to be seen and smelled, not swallowed. My father's love for Mother turned instantly lethal when he thought she was dying. This way, not that. It made such sense.

Despite all of the terrible matters flying around in my head, it was bliss to pee. All the complicated, perverse, and dangerous things that had happened and were sure to come, none was more important than this dumb little function I did ten times a day.
"Winner and still champeen, the cock!"

Life gives no explanations or excuses. We're the ones who think them up.

Unlike other words, like "love" or "hate." "morgue" has only one meaning. It is what it is -- the place where bodies are brought for a last look. Funeral homes are not the same. If a body is at the morgue, something besides death went wrong, its last breath was suspicious. There it is not dressed in a suit and arranged tastefully, but cut open and examined by someone looking for clues. Unlike that other house of the dead, this is not a last resting place, but rather the last questioning place. The questioners find their answers, not in words, but on the skin and under it.