He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

No private detective looks like a private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection."
"But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he's supposed not to look like? Seems to me there's a problem there.

There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

Increasingly, I realized that I could not merely tell his story. Rather, I would have to tell my story about him.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.