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1 " She thought of herself wondering how he was going to breathe in the coffin and marveled at the stubbornness of mental habits. "
― Glen Duncan , Death of an Ordinary Man
2 " She hated the predictability of herself, but knew life probably wouldn't be long enough for her to grow out of it. "
3 " That's the problem with being alive," she says, staring at the floor. "You've got to keep thinking of what to do. "
4 " He had a reservoir of tolerance for pain. Finite, though. Pain would empty it, eventually. "
5 " You have a good cry, lovey, you'll feel better afterwards. You did feel better afterwards, but as if you'd conned yourself, fobbed yourself off. "
6 " Catholicism fascinated him, the contortions it put itself through to make ends meet. Father Murray had kept returning to the word 'despair.' There'd been a little (bizarre, Luke thought) linguistic diversion into Latin. Desperare, formed by the 'de' prefex, signifying the removal of or from, and 'sperare,' meaning to hope. The removal of hope. That was despair. The reasoning being that you couldn't live without hope. What Murray hadn't said (but what, along with the story of the suicide ghost, Luke remembered from childhood) was that despair was classified as a sin against the Holy Spirit. That was the perverse beauty of the religion: that your daughter could be raped and murdered and yourself still condemned for giving up hope. "
