How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
What happens to us when we die: an informal poll.
Theory #1: The Christians are right. There's a big guy with a white robe and a long, flowing beard and a devil with a pitchfork, and depending on whether you've been bad or good (oh, be good, for goodness' sake!), you'll wind up playing a harp with the angels or burning in the everlasting fires of hell, both of which sound sucktastic.
Theory #2: The Jews are right, and when you die there's nothing, so you better have gotten plenty to eat in this life.
Theory #3: The Muslims are right, and I am in for some serious black-eyed virgin time. Then again, I've got black eyes and am a virgin, so I may be in for some serious trouble once I kick.
Theory #4: The Buddhists and Hindus are right. This life is one of many. You just go on working through your karmic baggage till you get it right. So be nice to that cockroach. That could be you someday.
Theory #5: The UFO crazies are right, and we are all one big experiment for a race of superaliens who like to sit around in the alien equivalent of the Barcalounger, sipping a brew and watching those wacky humans get up to the nuttiest sorts of hijinks. And when we buy the farm, they swoop down in the mother ship and take us back to Planet Z and the primordial ooze.
Theory #6: Nobody knows s***. (12.1-7)
It's not uncommon to start looking for answers about the afterlife when you find out you're going to die. (Or die sooner than you thought, anyway.) So Cam gets drawn into an Internet time-suck, and even after all his reading, he's unsatisfied with what the world's major religions think about death and dying. If you were a sixteen-year-old who just found out you were going to die, how would you feel about these answers?
Quote #5
For a long time, I thought it would be cool to die young. Honestly, things weren't going so well in the life department. Death seemed infinitely more glamorous and, you know, kind of hard to f*** up. (12.13)
Cam's never one to pick the road less traveled. He likes to do things the easy way, and for many, death seems easy. It happens to people accidentally all the time, so how hard can it be, right? But now that he's facing death down at high noon in the town square it's a lot harder than he thought to say goodbye to everything that he knows.
Quote #6
"This is not how I'm supposed to die."
"So how are you supposed to die?"
Her eyes take on a faraway sheen. "In a house by the sea in an upstairs bedroom. It's late spring, and the open window lets in the smell of lily of the valley. And there's a garden outside. It's decorated with paper lanterns, and the children, the children chase after fireflies while their parents laugh and talk as if they have all the time in the world. In a house by the sea, it will end, and I will slip from this life as if it were no more than a sweater grown too large and threadbare with years, something no longer needed. That is how it should be. Not here. Never here." She fixes me with her gaze. "I don't think you should die before you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can." (13.76-78)
Obviously this lady has put some thought into how she's supposed to go. After all, she's had the time; she's like, ancient. But it's a very romanticized version of death, don't you think? It's all flowers and laughing children and the distant sound of the sea. Maybe Cam, with his bitter acceptance of his fate, has a more realistic outlook.