“It must be hard,” said Laura, “not being alive.”
“You mean it’s hard for you to be dead? Look, I’m still going to figure out how to bring you back, properly. I think I’m on the right track.”
“No,” she said. “I mean, I’m grateful. And I hope you really can do it. I did a lot of bad stuff…” She shook her head. “But I was talking about you.”
“I’m alive,” said Shadow. “I’m not dead. Remember?”
“You’re not dead,” she said. “But I’m not sure you’re alive, either. Not really.”
This isn’t the way the conversation goes, thought Shadow. This isn’t the way anything goes.
“I love you,” she said dispassionately. “You’re my puppy. But when you’re really dead you get to see things clearer. It’s like there isn’t anyone there. You know? You’re like this big, solid, man-shaped hole in the world.” She frowned.”Even when we were together. I loved being with you because you adored me, and you would do anything for me. But sometimes I’d go into a room and I wouldn’t think there was anybody in there. And I’d turn the light on, or I’d turn the light off, and I’d realise that you were in there, sitting on your own, not reading, not watching TV, not doing anything.”
“I’m not dead,” he said.
“Maybe not,” she said. “But are you sure you’re alive?”
Excerpt from American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

“Music became my solace and companion. It carried me through those years because I knew that whatever horrors I had to endure I could always come home to it. I would submerge myself in it like a hot bath, drowning in luxury and allowing it to take me out of myself into a place of safety. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t have music playing in my head.”
Excerpt from Silent Scream by Josh Cannon