Gately dreams Mrs. Waite and Death (pp. 850–851)
Death says the woman who either knowingly or involuntarily kills you is always someone you love, and she’s always your next life’s mother. This is why Moms are so obsessively loving, why they try so hard no matter what private troubles or issues or addictions they have of their own, why they seem to value your welfare above their own, and why there’s always a slight, like, twinge of selfishness about their obssessive mother-love: they’re trying to make amends for a murder neither of you quite remember, except maybe in dreams.
Context
Death's doctrine, delivered patiently to Gately across Mrs. Waite's kitchen table. This is — nearly point for point — the content Molly Notkin attributes to the Entertainment (pp. 788-795): Madame Psychosis as Death explaining that Death is the mother. Gately has never seen the samizdat, yet here he is dreaming its script with Joelle in the role her own self played for Himself's camera; the doctrine even ends by naming dreams as the one place the murder is remembered. The text reads "obssessive" — carried as written.