I believe he died this way on purpose. I believe he wanted no chilling moments, no one to witness his last breath and be haunted by it, the way he had been haunted by his mother's death-notice telegram or by his father's corpse in the city morgue.

And then he died. He did not know he was dead.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again...

He was dying all his life.

I steeled myself against laughter; I would rather die than laugh. I didn’t laugh, I did not laugh. But I died, I did die.

He had come to life for maybe a minute to try to tell us something, something none of us cared to listen to or tried to understand, and the effort had drained him dry.

If you hear I'm dead, don't come to my funeral.

You never really knew a man, he said, until you saw him die

My friends joke that I’m dead until I get onstage. I’m dead right now as you’re speaking to me.

Puede decirse muy bien que no empecé a vivir hasta que me tuve por muerto.

So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.

If it was true what her mother had once told her, then nothing rang the telephone like death in the middle of the night.

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.

2. i got 14 fevers/ i got 5 believers...dressed up like men
tell your mama not to worry/

2. (a) tell your mama & your pappa i'm trying to keep from dying too

3. tell your mamma & your pappa that there's nothing wrong with my jugular vein
tell your mama i love her & tell your sister Alice the same

4. when you sleep on windows & you stay up all night swallowing rocks

5. i should've sent her to Hong Kong instead of leaving