Quotes
How could one create life with someone who represented death?
I'm just trying to lead my own fucking life if I can manage to find it in all this confusion.
He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.
p. 48
AutobiographySo he was a little more callous than the rest of the world’s billions. But not much. Every voter had a bit of the organlegger in him. In voting the death penalty for so many crimes, the law makers had only bent to pressure from the voters. There was a spreading lack of respect for life, the evil side of transplant technology. The good side was a longer life for everyone. One condemned criminal could save a dozen deserving lives. Who could complain about that?
p. 34
Once when Isaac and I talked about old age, illness, and death, he said it wasn’t so terrible to get sick and old and to die if you’ve been part of life completing itself as a pattern. Even if you don’t make it to old age, it’s still worthwhile, there’s still pleasure in that vision of being part of the pattern of life—especially a pattern expressed in creativity and shared in love.
p. 562
To us, all life is a series of accidents to be met with improvisations. To them, all life is purposive and should be met with precalculation.
For what is life but organized energy?
p. 656
It was good to be alive; it was better to be young; it was best of all to be in love.
p. 284
He had discharged his destiny; now, perhaps, he could begin to live.
p. 187
One feels that [in Knossos, c. 1500 B.C.] man […] was religious in the only way which is becoming to man, by making the most of everything that comes to hand, by extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute.
p. 121
The Colossus of MaroussiThe secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.
Last Evenings On EarthWe never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.
Last Evenings On Earth
