Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

by David Eagleman

The missing crowds make you lonely. You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting. But no one listens or sympathizes with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive.

cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives.

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

And that is the curse of this room: since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.