All the body wants to do biologically is decompose. Once you die, it's, 'Let me out here! I'm ready to shoot my atoms back into the universe!'

The home funeral - caring for the dead ourselves - changes our relationship to grieving. If you have been married to someone for 50 years, why would you let someone take them away the moment they die?

Going around not fully believing that you're going to die is really problematic because it affects how you think about the future of the planet, about the future of your own life, about the decisions you're making.

Vaults and caskets are not the law; they are the policy of individual cemeteries. Vaults prevent the settling of the dirt around the body, thus making landscaping more uniform and cost effective. As an added bonus, vaults can be customized and sold at a markup. Faux marble? Bronze? Take your pick, family.

When you go through the death of somebody who you care about, and taking on moving, bills, and a daughter, it makes you feel older. You learn a lot about life.

Treat Death as it treats us: with utter indifference.

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. There may be legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not... with regard to abortion and euthanasia.

I am convinced that the world-wide protests during the Rivonia trial saved Mandela and his fellow-accused from a death sentence. But in South Africa, a life sentence means imprisonment until death - or until the defeat of the government which holds these men prisoner.