Opening paragraphs and interesting sentences...

     Like an early nineteenth-century poet, when I have melancholy moments and feel the world is too much for us and that late and soon we lay waste to our powers in getting and spending, I'm forced to pause and reflect upon my experiences with the dead and the hold they exert on our lives.
     This may seem a macabre perspective on one's life, but at a certain point it seems to be the only one we have.  Mortality is not kind, and do not let anyone tell you it is.  If there is such a thing as wisdom, and I have serious doubts about its presence in my own life, it lies in the acceptance of the human condition and perhaps the knowledge that those who have passed on are still with us, out there in the mist, showing us the way, sometimes uttering a word of caution from the shadows, sometimes visiting us in our sleep, as bright as a candle burning inside a basement that has no windows.

-James Lee Burke,  Robicheaux