I am infected with life and will die of it in time. - Peter S. Beagle

You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.

I walked a long way that night, thinking many philosophic thoughts which, fortunately, I don’t remember.

Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard's castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts...