Mortality

by Christopher Hitchens

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

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

That he not busy being born is busy dying.

I don’t have a body, I am a body.

With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts … and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own … Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.