Fred

“You know what I realized?” “What?” “Most of the people I know are dead. I guess that happens”
― Lawrence Block, Everybody Dies

“You said if X has something valuable and Y comes along and takes it away from him, and there is absolutely no way in the world X can ever get it back, then you come along and make a deal with X to get it back, and keep half. Then you just … live on that until it starts to run out. Is that the way it is, really?”
― John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Good-By

“Of course it’s all a game. All of the good and hard and even bad things in life are just a game.”
― Dan Simmons, The Crook Factory

“It took a while to tell but it hadn’t taken all that long to live;”
― Lawrence Block, A Ticket to the Boneyard