American Gods

by Neil Gaiman

If Hell is other people, thought Shadow, then Purgatory is airports.

Shadow felt like a pea being flicked between three cups, or a card being shuffled through a deck.

“I worship your nipples, from which the milk of life flows. Your kiss is honey and your touch scorches like fire, and I worship it.” His words are becoming more rhythmic now, keeping pace with the thrust and roll of their bodies. “Bring me your lust in the morning, and bring me relief and your blessing in the evening. Let me walk in dark places unharmed and let me come to you once more and sleep beside you and make love with you again. I worship you with everything that is within me, and everything inside my mind, with everywhere I’ve been and my dreams and my…”

Every hour wounds. The last one kills.

“Slick as a snake in a barrel of butter,”

you never say no to the opportunity to piss, to eat, or to get half an hour’s shut-eye.

The black dog licked its long snout. Then it said, in a deep, dry voice, “I saw Harry Houdini once, and believe me, man, you are no Harry Houdini.”

Shadow wanted to shake himself, the awkward boy that he once was, get him to hold her hand, talk to her, do something before she slipped away, as he knew that she would. But he could not touch himself, and he continued to read; and so his mother died while he sat in the chair next to her, reading a fat book. After that he had more or less stopped reading. You could not trust fiction. What good were books, if they couldn’t protect you from something like that?

“Call no man happy until he is dead. Herodotus.”

you can’t judge the shape of someone’s life until it’s over and done.”