Life Is Short And So Is This Book

by Peter Atkins

I was recently chatting with a guy I met who’d been quite successful. I said I’d been in New York on 9/11, and had heard through a friend he was supposed to have been at the top of the World Trade Center that day, but that he’d fortunately cancelled last minute. He corrected me: "Actually, I was supposed to be the keynote speaker at an important event at the World Trade Center on 9/11." I was stunned: He’d almost died in a spectacular catastrophe that impacted millions of people, and yet, years later, in telling the story he tried to impress me with the status of his job! I told him I thought he was just lucky to be alive.