Status Updates From Abschied[e]

I am at least trying to be stoical, and I sleep more since cancer and its treatment arrived in my life. And while I still hate and fear death (though recognising the pointlessness of such protests), do I rage against it? I'm not sure I ever did — I think I tried to wail lucidly against it. And self-pity is hardly relevant when you see how suffering strikes down others, and how ill-equipped many are to deal with it.

“Later, I began thinking about members of 'my breed' who wrote well about love, whether aphoristically or novelistically. 'In love, there is always one who kisses and one who turns the cheek' — I quoted that in my first novel, and it now seemed appropriate to the present case. Then there was the more famous: 'There are people who would never fall in love if they hadn't first heard it talked about.'”