Gone Before Goodbye

by Reese Witherspoon

You wonder what makes a hero? There’s altruism, sure. But there’s also ego and recklessness and thrill-seeking.

you learn in the hardest of ways that fate is fickle, that life is chaos and no one gets out unscathed, that you can have everything one moment and have it all snatched away so easily…

debates lasting into the wee hours of the morning in the days when disagreeing was considered a good thing, when differing viewpoints were welcomed because they challenged and honed your thinking rather than producing anger and scorn.

What do you call a longing for critical thinking and common sense and decency?

Dad loved to quote Flaubert on the subject: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so you may be violent and original in your work.”

if you think our legal system is about truth or fairness or equality, you’re either not paying attention or delusional.

Scratch the surface of a person doing good works, and you’ll find someone who fears the mundane and conventional.

“Enjoy the smaller moments,” her father had often told her. “That’s where life is lived.”

Sharon had found a way. She figured out how to use someone’s life data to recreate a near-perfect digital duplicate of a human being.

You’ve heard about the five stages of grief—denial being the first, followed by anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those stages are wrong, Maggie thinks—or at the very least, inadequate.

the reality of that truth crippled her. That’s when denial rushes in. Denial comes second, not first, because those first few seconds when you comprehend the awful truth—Stage One should actually be “total understanding”—are so devastating, so awful, so painful, so debilitating that your mind forces you to move on to denial in order to survive.

So total understanding is the first stage. Then denial. Anger, bargaining, depression arrived together, a toxic concoction, one overlapping and blending with the others. You spiral. And with that comes the need to numb.

You have to walk before you can run.

Greed is not ‘I need more’—it’s the fear of losing what you already have. Of going back. So you hold on tighter and keep trying to climb up. Because that’s the only way you can go. Life won’t let you stand still. You are either on your way up or you’re on your way down. And you’ll do anything not to go down.”

The power of this particular griefbot is both enticing and destructive, but when you think about it, when you really think about it, that’s true of every invention that makes an impact. There is no such thing as a consequence-free discovery. It is what man chooses to do with it.

“I promise you that your life will be extraordinary,”

“Do you know who Eric Hoffer is?” “No.” “An American philosopher. He has this quote I love: ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.’”

Life is always a high school cafeteria.

“We are all the hero in our own story,” Maggie says.

“Part of the human condition is that we all think that we are uniquely complex—no one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of—and yet we are convinced we can read other people. We think that we know what’s going on inside others, what they are really feeling or experiencing or thinking, but they can’t tell the same about us. That’s obviously impossible. You and Marc…” Porkchop stops and shakes his head. “You guys were the best couple I’d ever seen. But you weren’t”—he puts his palms together—“‘one.’ That’s new-age bullshit. It’s also undesirable. Marc didn’t tell you everything about Ragoravich because he wanted to protect you.

“No one knows what we are really thinking, what we are capable of.”

“None of us get to decide how we die, Doctor McCabe.”

Do you know what the global life expectancy was in 1900? Thirty-seven years. Thirty-seven! That’s what your natural immunities got you. Do you know what life expectancy is today? Seventy-three. Think about that. And do you know why? Of course you do. You’re an intelligent physician. We live longer because of modern medicine—antibiotics, vaccines, control of infectious disease, new treatments for cancer, stroke, and yes, cardiovascular disease. We live longer because we stopped relying on our ‘natural immunities.’”

“You don’t believe in life after death, do you?” Porkchop shakes his head. “We get one ride. This is it.”