Quotes
"We're not dead yet," said Julia prosaically.
"Not physically. Six months, a year--five years, conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing."
Now Tom was - the hell with that, he said to himself. It is something that happens to everybody. I should know about that by now. It is the only thing that is really final, though.
How do you know that? he asked himself. Going away can be final. Walking out the door can be final. Any form of real betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final.
'Shit,' said Eddie. 'What the fuck they kill that Davy for?'
'Let's leave it alone, Eddy,' Thomas Hudson said. 'It's way past things we know about.'
Dying is only bad when it takes a long time and hurts so much that it humiliates you.
When a man is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes; that of giving it.
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
There is no remedy for anything in life. Death is a sovereign remedy for all misfortunes.
That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.
They hanged Sam Cardinella at six o’clock in the morning in the corridor of the county jail. The corridor was high and narrow with tiers of cells on either side. All the cells were occupied. The men had been brought in for the hanging. Five men sentenced to be hanged were in the five top cells. Three of the men to be hanged were negroes. They were very frightened. One of the white men sat on his cot with his head in his hands. The other lay flat on his cot with a blanket wrapped around his head. They came out onto the gallows through a door in the wall. There were six or seven of them including two priests. They were carrying Sam Cardinella. He had been like that since about four o’clock in the morning. While they were strapping his legs together two guards held him up and the two priests were whispering to him. “Be a man, my son,” said one priest.
One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another: the groping inquiry must begin anew. Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion.
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
