death

The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life. Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

She never used to smoke but more and more she tells me she can't stand the idea of living to a ripe old age.

Because the only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot? And if Christ had died from a barbiturate overdose, alone on the bathroom floor, would He be in Heaven?

We feel so superior to the dead. For example, if Michelangelo was so damn smart, why'd he die?

"Listen, Jake," he leaned forward on the bar. "Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?" "Yes, every once in a while." "Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we'll be dead?" "What the hell, Robert," I said. "What the hell." "I'm serious." "It's one thing I don't worry about," I said. "You ought to." "I've had plenty to worry about one time or other. I'm through worrying."

I used to get a big kick out of saving people's lives. Now I wonder what the hell's the point, since they all have to die anyway. "Oh, there's a point, all right," Dunbar assured him. "Is there? What is the point?" "The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can." "Yeah, but what's the point, since they all have to die anyway?" "The trick is not to think about that." "Never mind the trick. What the hell's the point?" Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. "Who the hell knows?"

Enough times like that, and looking down the actual barrel of an actual gun, its trigger under your actual thumb—not your forefinger, because you have the gun pointed at yourself, resting against your sternum, and it's the thumb that can best pull (or in this case push) the trigger—this can be seen as a huge relief, as a promise that the fear will finally stop. This happens all the time. It happens so often that one form of PTSD therapy goes like this—you don't have to worry so much, because if it stays this bad you can always kill yourself. And for some sufferers this thought is a real comfort, sometimes even the anchor point of a way back to sanity. You can always end this misery by killing yourself; so give it another day and see how it goes.

VLADIMIR: [sententious] To every man his little cross. [He sighs.] Till he dies. [Afterthought.] And is forgotten.

VLADIMIR: What do they say? ESTRAGON: They talk about their lives. VLADIMIR: To have lived is not enough for them. ESTRAGON: They have to talk about it. VLADIMIR: To be dead is not enough for them. ESTRAGON: It is not sufficient.

She knew what it was—she had succumbed to that profound drive shared by all creatures who are faced with death—the drive to seek immortality through progeny. The fertility drive of the species had overpowered them.

If I die of TB, it will be because my body could not build prisons fast enough and strong enough. Is there a lesson there? Not a cheerful one.

Man faces the darkening shadows of his life. His passage to the grave. If she were here it would not be so bad. Not bad at all.

Mors certa, vita incerta,