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In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.
knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.
To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice.
Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.
“Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer,”
What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating.
Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy.
in Tumortown you sometimes feel that you may expire from sheer advice.
“Until you have done something for humanity,” wrote the great American educator Horace Mann, “you should be ashamed to die.”
Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic.
Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say)
Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich stärker.
he was able to avail himself of a historically unprecedented level of care, while at the same time being exposed to a degree of suffering that previous generations might not have been able to afford.
not the wish to die with dignity but the desire to have died.
I would often find fatalism and resignation washing drearily over me as I failed to battle my general inanition.
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfills himself in many ways and soon, I suppose, I shall be swept away by some vulgar little tumor
Brave? Hah! Save it for a fight you can’t run away from.
Saul Bellow: Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything.
We embraced in a shadow that only we saw and chose to defy.
