Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia

Illness is a story told in the past tense.

Jeb is going to grow up to be the kind of man who spends his Saturdays teaching his little boy to ride a bike. (...) Charlie, on the other hand, will be off playing golf while his kid kills people on his Xbox. Charlie will be dashing and debonair, and he'll buy his kid all kinds of crap, but he'll never actually be there.

The oblivion fear is something else, fear that I won’t be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don’t live alife in service of a greater good, you’ve gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won’t get either alife or a death that means anything.