Some interesting quotes, about death.



"Dying
is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well."

--Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp;
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

---Dorothy Parker, Resume --1926

"Most people, in committing a suicidal act, are just as muddled as when they do anything important under emotional stress. Carefully planned acts of suicide are as rare as carefully planned acts of homicide." --Erwin Stengel

"It seemed like a good idea...at the time."---Anon

"A thousand people are `officially' dead of suicide every day, but they are not the only ones who are faced with the constant choice between life and death. We all are....We might lack the nerve to commit the final act, and we might not recognize our `sinful' tendencies for what they are, but day in and day out we confront the problem of our innate attraction to self-destruction. We live in a world that encourages the small daily acts of negation that prepare us for the great one. There are meanings of suicide that neither the courts nor the dictionaries admit, but that make it impossible for us to regard those thousand people a day who do themselves in as very different from us. They are not necessarily `sick' or `sinners', but simply our sisters and brothers. And who are we? We are the resigned housewives, the compulsive playboys, the despairing priests, the addicted teenagers, the reckless drivers, the bored bureaucrats, the lonely salesmen, the smiling stewardesses, the restless drifters, the walking wounded....It may be nothing more than the steadfast commitment to sameness. The simplest form of suicide is the act of refusing the adventures and challenges that offer themselves to us every day. `No, thanks,' we say. `I prefer not to,' we murmur, like Melville's Bartleby, preferring to stare at the wall outside the window. Preferring, as I do on especially bad days, to stay in bed." --James Carroll

If you play Russian roulette with a six-shooter, your odds of dying are one in six; if you climb Mt. Everest they're also about one in six. The former is a generally-condemned form of suicide; what, then, is the latter?

"A man was hanged who had cut his throat, but who had been brought back to life. They hanged him for suicide. The doctor had warned them that it was impossible to hang him as the throat would burst open and he would breathe through the aperture. They did not listen to his advice and hanged their man. The wound in the neck immediately opened and the man came back to life again although he was hanged. It took time to convoke the aldermen to decide the question of what was to be done. At length the aldermen assembled and bound up the neck below the wound until he died. Oh my Mary, what a crazy society and what a stupid civilization."


Well, relax. I'm not going to die any time soon.
Some people are afraid of falling into love because they know that they will always end up the losing party and have their heart broken again. And again. Some are afraid of marrying.

I wonder whether I will be afraid of friendships.