Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

Interesting, quirky, funny, philosophical and wonderfully written. (I should really read more of his stuff.)
Excerpts:

Priscilla - “…If there’s such a universal longing for immortality, if the human race is going bananas because it can’t accept any more that it has to die, why do we still have wars? All this military violence seems to contradict your theory.”

Wiggs - “Not in the least… your common man is willin’ to go to war only because he hates death so much.”

“Don’t you see? The enemy represents Death to ‘em. The government propaganda mills paint the enemy as an unfeelin’, devourin’ monster. So, when we go to war we go on a noble mission, a life-affirming mission, whose object is the destruction o’ death. And ‘tis precisely because we hate death so much that we’re too crazed and irrational to see the irony in it. We hate death so bloody much that we will kill – and die – in order to try to halt its march.”

“As a grandiose self-deception, war is o’ the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion – usually both at the same time – as a means o’ defeatin’ death, but neither o’ them do a blinkin’ thing but sanctin dyin’. Throughout history, Death’s best friend has been a priest with a knife.”
(Pgs. 278-279)

Priscilla - “To be or not to be isn’t the question. The question is how to prolong being.”

Wiggs – “Nostalgia and hope stand equally in the way of authentic experience”

“The rich are the most discriminated-against minority in the world. Openly or covertly, everybody hates the rich because, openly or covertly, everybody envies the rich. Me, I love the rich. Somebody has to love them. Sure, a lot o’ rich people are assholes, but believe me, a lot o’ poor people are assholes, too, and an asshole with money can at least pay for his own drinks.”
(Pg.299)

Narrator - “Their quarrelling chewed through the curtains, pierced the casements, and rattled over the cobblestones outside. How strange it must have sounded, this quarrelling about dematerialization, voluntary aging, goat gods, and immortality, to a city that was primed for the Age of Reason, a populace that was beginning to put Descartes before des horse.
(Pg. 174)