I don't know how you got off that plane without me seeing you, or how you trailed me here. 'I don't like you, Mister Wednesday, or whatever your real name may be.“That’s why I need someone to look out for my best interests.” “He’s a hustler.” “Damn straight I’m a hustler,” said Wednesday. 'He’s hustling you,” said Mad Sweeney, rubbing his bristly ginger beard.And in return I shall make sure that your needs are adequately taken care of. In the unlikely event of my death, you will hold my vigil. In an emergency, but only in an emergency, you hurt people who need to be hurt. 'Like I said, don't piss off those bitches in the airports,' said Johnnie Larch, in the back of his mind, 'or they'll haul your sorry ass back here before you can spit'.If Hell is other people, thought Shadow, then Purgatory is airports.And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let you out. There are always places to go further down.If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. He could see nothing romantic in a death sentence. He did not awake in prison with a feeling of dread he was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom.

The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief.Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered.

American gods novel