That night she checked the bolt thirty-two times when she went to bed, though she knew it was too late. Nobody was already inside the gates, and that's what panic actually was, she realized. It was the noise of the world whispering in your ear, when your life was ruled by something that wasn't there.
It was the sound of nobody talking, all the time.

I know how much difference a night's sleep can make, that what seems ungovernable and world-breaking at one A.M. can be made to feel like someone else's dream if you put seven hours of unconsciousness between it and you. Tomorrow's not just another day, another person lives it—and every time you go to sleep, you say good-bye.

There was an afternoon, three years ago, when my son died in front of my eyes, when I'd dived into the water and then stood exactly where I was now, holding something in my arms for which I had made a sandwich four hours before: when I stood knowing that the person for whom I'd slapped cold cuts and cheese between bread, and then sliced the result into the preferred triangular form, had gone away and was no longer there; and that the wet, heavy thing that remained was nothing but a lie.
What is the difference between those two states? Nobody has a clue. The local doctors and the coroner certainly didn't. All they could tell me was that Scott had been dead before he hit the water, and they had no idea how or why.
I'm sorry, Mr. Henderson. But he just died.
This difference is why our species makes sacrifices, performs rituals, repeats forms of words to ourselves in the dark watches of the night. Gods are merely foils in this process, and audience for the supplications of metaphor in the face of the intractable monolith of reality. We need someone to listen to these prayers, because without a listener, they cannot come true, and therefore there must be gods, and they must be kind, else they would never grant our wishes—in which case why would we pray to them in the first place?