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How, then, can we confront death without succumbing to the fear it inspires in us? By recognizing that death is nothing to us. When we die, we are no longer. There is nothing left to experience the pain of death. While we are alive, we are
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“There in the hospital Billy was having an adventure very common among people without power in times of war: he was trying to prove to a willfully deaf and blind enemy that he is interesting to hear and see.”
― Slaughterhouse-Five
― Slaughterhouse-Five
“How does one define a “simple” memory anyway? Is there even such a thing when it comes to the human condition? Consider the albatross that landed on the platform during her run this morning. It’s a mere flicker of thought in her mind that will one day be cast out into that wasteland of oblivion where forgotten memories die. And yet it contains the smell of the sea. The white, wet feathers of the bird glistening in the early sun. The pounding of her heart from the exertion of the run. The cold slide of sweat down her sides and the burn of it in her eyes. Her wondering in that moment where the bird considered home in the unending sameness of the sea. When every memory contains a universe, what does simple even mean?”
― Recursion
― Recursion
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD”
― Recursion
― Recursion
“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― Cloud Atlas
― Cloud Atlas
“Death is the ultimate source of both the tragedy and the beauty of a human life. Moreover, death's tragedy is the source of life's beauty and vice versa. Although it is better that we are mortal, it is nevertheless a shame that we have to die. To die brings to a pointless end the involvements that make up our lives. And yet without that pointless end those involvements themselves might have no point. They would only be part of the endless passing show. They would be unable to touch us. That is to say, without the beauty of the moments that we are granted in this life, our death would be no tragedy; and without the tragedy of death, those moments would have no beauty. In this sense, as in the other senses we have discussed, death is the deepest and most important fact about us. To be human is to die and, more importantly, to know that one will die throughout one's life, even when (or especially when) we go to great lengths to avoid that knowledge.”
― Death
― Death
Brian’s 2025 Year in Books
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