Mortality

by Christopher Hitchens

I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions.

If something is worth hearing or listening to, it’s very probably worth reading. So, this above all: Find your own voice.

Note

They told me, Heraclitus; they told me you were dead. They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed. I wept when I remembered how often you and I Had tired the sun with talking, and sent him down the sky.

great poem

Dulce et decorum est Pro patria

mori.

Montaigne: “Religion’s

surest foundation is the contempt for life.”

If I convert it’s because it’s better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.

haha

See Szymborska’s poem on torture and the body as a reservoir of pain.

see it