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Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.

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Why shouldn't his death bring you into some total scandal of garment-rending grief? Why should you accommodate his death? Or surrender to it in thin-l...more

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The vast and terrible depth."“Of course,” he said.“The inexhaustibility.”“I understand.”“The whole huge nameless thing.”“Yes, absolutely.”“The massive...more

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The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? The...more

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Supermarkets this large and clean and modern are a revelation to me. I spent my life in small steamy delicatessens with slanted display cabinets full ...more

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When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more y...more

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People get bitten. But I won't.' I found myself saying, 'You will, you will. These snakes don't know you find death inconceivable. They don't know you...more

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No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal k...more

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The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the ste...more

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Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justifica...more

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All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part o...more

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Would you ask a man who bags groceries if he fears death not because it is death but because there are still some interesting groceries he would like ...more

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I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.

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I'd never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying. This was not the frailty of a man who is said to be "only human," subject to a ...more