He seemed dead, but perhaps “dead” meant something different. Perhaps it meant something less permanent.

Is he dead?" Irravel asked.
"Depends what you mean by dead.

But I thought you were dead,’ I put in. ‘Mors janua vitae,’ he smiled.

A man says he is dead but he is alive. But his 'truth' is that he is dead. He expresses it perhaps in the only way common (i.e. the communal) sense allows him. He means that he is 'really' and quite 'literally' dead, not merely symbolically or 'in a sense' or 'as it were', and is seriously bent on communicating his truth. [...] He either is God, or the Devil, or in hell, estranged from God. When someone says he is an unreal man or that he is dead, in all seriousness, expressing in radical terms the stark truth of his existence as he experiences it, that is - insanity. [...] What is required of us? Understand him? [...] As long as we are sane and he is insane, it will remain so. [...] We have to recognize all the time his distinctiveness and differentness, his separateness and loneliness and despair.

[she] gave me a puzzled frown like she thought offhand i was dead but the media's so unreliable these days.

Reason is lost reasoning.

When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I 'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living."

In the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent

I thought so at first, but there is reason to believe that he is still alive. But that in itself does not constitute a problem.

"Your tricks with words prove nothing, machine. I still don't think you are alive." "I never claimed to be alive. I do, however, think." "I refuse to believe that." "It must be a terrible burden to have such a closed mind. I know I can think, but I sometimes wonder how people like you, who refuse to see what is in front of your faces, can make the same claim. You certainly present no evidence of the ability."

I thought you were going to say I was dead,' I said.

'I just couldn't kill you off,' the boy said.

'Thank you, Huck.

Now and then, I am surprised to read of the death of someone I have known, because I thought he or she had died long ago. Actually, he had only stopped growing.

Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only by reasoning against reason. The most incisive sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used, as loose labels for particular periods, the one is now almost as remote as the other. What was called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.

This—this guy is dead now, right?
Marguerite shrugged. "Death is such a fragile thing. Who knows? I've heard rumors, but you can't depend on anything these days. The greatest wizards of antiquity turn up with less warning than Hamptons houseguests."