"True loneliness, I learned that day, isn’t the lack of others. It’s the lack of others quickly."

““Son,” he said, “you’re going to work in this life, and you’re going to play. And when the last days come, you’ll look back and find that that’s all there was, and endless stream of days going back to today. But if you can find the thing you should be doing, the thing that makes you you, and if you can make that thing yours, then you’ve beaten the game. I haven’t. Most men don’t. You probably won’t, either, but the point is to try, and to never give up, even when you think it’s over.”

“I recognize that the career draws applicants from a certain psychological pool. Garrett came from somewhere near the shallow end.”

“Due to the nature of my profession, I’ve been around death quite a lot, and while I’m not exactly on a first-name basis with the Reaper, we’ve exchanged business cards enough times to give each other a friendly nod when we pass by on the job.”

“I like to think that she was right. And I would have responded, but soon our talk show came on, and we stopped worrying about ourselves and each other and started worrying about celebrities.”

“When Melinda filed for divorce, she wrote down only two words as her reason for seeking a dissolution of our two-year marriage: Incontrovertibly self-absorbed. Or is that three words? No matter. The question I have is: Did she mean me or her?”

“I signed up for the sake of a uniform. I was not the first, and I will not be the last.”