You Could Hold Me And I Could

When We Think Of Death, We Often Imagine It As Happening In Degrees: We Think Of A Sick Person Becoming Less And Less Alive Until Finally They Are Gone.

There Was Quite A Lot Of Competitiveness About It, With Everybody Wanting To Beat Not Only Cancer Itself, But Also The Other People In The Room. Like, I Realize That This Is Irrational, But When They Tell You That You Have, Say, A 20 Percent Chance Of Living Five Years, The Math Kicks In And You Figure That’s One In Five . . . So You Look Around And Think, As Any Healthy Person Would: I Gotta Outlast Four Of These Bastards.

Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?' This Is An Old Argument In The Field Of Thinking About Suffering And Its Stupidity And Lack Of Sophistication Could Be Plumbed For Centuries But Suffice It To Say That The Existence Of Broccoli Does Not, In Any Way, Affect The Taste Of Chocolate.

It Is Easy To Forget How Full The World Is Of People, Full To Bursting, And Each Of Them Imaginable And Consistently Misimagined.

We Have To Live With Ambiguity. We Have To Give Ourselves Over To It. The Question Is: How? How Are We Going To Live In A Universe Where Important Questions Will Always Go Unanswered?