“You’re talking to yourself.” “It’s all right. I’m not listening.” (p. 78) — Keith Laumer

I was still alive, but that was a mere detail, subject to change. (p. 13)

The last burst picked me up and threw me a thousand miles into an open grave and the mud showered down on me and a giant tombstone fell out of the sky to mark the place, but I didn’t care any more, because I was far away, in that place where the heroes and the cowards lie together with a fine impartiality, waiting for eternity to pass, slowly, like a procession of snails creeping across an endless desert toward a distant line of mountains. (p. 18)

Adventure has been defined as somebody else having a difficult time, a long way away. (p. 17)