To the young there are no degrees of old just as there are no degrees of dead - either you are, or you are not.
There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so ex...
The gardener is the quintessential optimist: not only does he believe that the future will bear out the fruits of his efforts, he believes in the future.
Secrets have always been easy for me, it's the opposite of secrets that is hard.
REGINALD BURNABY THE GREAT (variously identified as a defrocked Roman Catholic priest from Galway, an ex-convict from Liverpool, if not an escaped convict from that seaport city)
Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.
Now the broken-off parts of her life, the fragments, bits, puzzle pieces, began to fall into place, to assemble themselves, as invariably they do once we are under the enchantment of Death.
Nor do I like being told upsetting news—unless there is a good reason. I can’t help but feel that there is an element of cruelty, if not sadism, in friends telling one another upsetting things for no...
Never can you climb over this wall, you’re not strong enough; girls aren’t strong enough; girls aren’t big enough; your body is fragile and breakable, like a doll; your body is a doll; your body is fo...
Life is the horror, abortion or miscarriage is the redemption. As Sophocles said so beautifully, ‘Never to have been born is best, but once you’ve entered this world, return as quickly as possible to...
It was hard not to exude the air of a martyr, if one did just slightly more than the other, as it seemed Mickey frequently did.
In her behavior Mrs. S——was youthful and loud-talking which made us uneasy, for children are not comfortable when adults behave as if they are not adults. Often it seemed that Mrs. S——was winking at u...
Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.
How exhausted I am suddenly!—though this has been Ray’s best day in the hospital so far, and we are feeling—almost—exhilarated.
Her favorite foods made her gag, like old friends she hadn’t seen in years turning up looking all wrong.
He thinks: He could give up. He could admit defeat. But he will not admit defeat. He is still alive.
Considered in the abstract the boxing ring is an altar of sorts, one of those legendary spaces where the laws of a nation are suspended: inside the ropes, during an officially regulated three-minute r...
Asked by a journalist how he had felt after an unsuccessful election, Abraham Lincoln said, Like a little boy who stubbed his toe in the dark, he was too old to cry but it hurt too much to laugh.
No way of life so entrenched will ever 'wither away' - it must be helped, with dynamite, if need be.
Loving Felix she’d acquired from him a certain arrogance, telling so many lies she’d acquired a zest for lies and quite preferred them to the truth. For a lie had to be invented, truth was common prop...