Mortality

by Christopher Hitchens

To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

Indeed, it occurs to me that if I didn’t have such a stout constitution I might have led a much healthier life thus far.

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy.

“Until you have done something for humanity,” wrote the great American educator Horace Mann, “you should be ashamed to die.”

It’s no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don’t have a body, I am a body.

have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. —T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.

My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.

Death has this much to be said for it: You don’t have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free. —Kingsley Amis

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn Suicide remarks are torn From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn Plays wasted words, proves to warn That he not busy being born is busy dying. —Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime … Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Saul Bellow: Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything.