pennies

"It's not death that you should be afraid of, but living, and how quickly we have to do it," he said.

"And whose quote is that?"

"Some girl's. It's like, that death shouldn't really be scary. There's nothing to be afraid of after the event, nothing you can really believe in anyway. Heaven and hell are just so many rumours, who cares? When you get there, if you get there, you're there and - well, that's that. Trying to aim for one or the other is shooting in the dark, it's dangerous."

"Dodgy insurance policy."

"Exactly. Life? That's scary. What's interesting about death is not the thing itself but everything that's left, everything we do to try and get around it. Believing in heaven isn't half as important as the fact that we do - I mean, there's pennies on gravestones, shrines by roadsides. That's scary. Why exactly do we think that any of that matters? But we do, and we should, because being alive when someone else is dead is scary."

"That's crazy," she said, "you don't think death is scary?"

"Oh yeah, I do, but it's the fact that I do that's terrifying."