" Someone said that everyone should stay back, so as not to stress me, but I said no. I said I wanted to see them all, to see people. I wanted to see not just the people I loved and the people I knew, but also the people I didn’t know. I wanted to see people, because people had been my life, the good and bad, but always so many more good people than bad. They had been my life, and I did not want to die without the faces of people as the last thing I saw of that beautiful and mysterious world. "

― Dean Koontz , Saint Odd (Odd Thomas, #7)