From Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson:
Leon Sanchez asked, “Are the women in with you madre, Fish-man?”
“My name Fiskadoro.” He was aware that mucus flowed from his nostrils, but he felt he would demean himself by wiping it away. “My father is dead.”
The others nodded. Harvard gouged a depression in the sand with his toes and placed his heel in it.
“My father is dead!” As soon as he’d said it, Fiskadoro saw he’d made it true again – again for the first time. Did it just go around and around? He began to see that his sorrow wasn’t simple. It wasn’t one thing, but a thousand things carrying him away to the Ocean: the work of a person’s life was to drink it.
PS I can’t stand for my copyediting reputation to be impugned by bad grammar, so keep in mind that that the [sic]s above are part of Denis Johnson’s postapocalyptic dialect.