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"When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying."
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"There is no conclusive evidence of life after death, but there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know, so why fret about it?"
"After you die, a rare friend or family member may carry your memory throughout life. Most will forget you. As if you were never here."
"One can not come back from life."
"Nothing matters when you are dead, and, you are dead when nothing matters."
"Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me."
"After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken."
"You'll forget it when you're dead, and so will I. When I'm dead, I'm going to forget everything"and I advise you to do the same."
"Nineteenth-century preacher Henry Ward Beecher's last words were "Now comes the mystery." The poet Dylan Thomas, who liked a good drink at least as much as Alaska, said, "I've had eighteen straight whiskeys. I do believe that's a record," before dying. Alaska's favorite was playwright Eugene O'Neill: "Born in a hotel room, and--God damn it--died in a hotel room." Even car-accident victims sometimes have time for last words. Princess Diana said, "Oh God. What's happened?" Movie star James Dean said, "They've got to see us," just before slamming his Porsche into another car. I know so many last words. But I will never know hers."
Explore more quotes by Don DeLillo
"The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?"
"Writers in repressive societies are considered dangerous. That's why so many of them are in jail."
"The writer is the person who stands outside society, independent of affiliation and independent of influence."
"I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence."
"One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language."
"I slept for four years. I didn't study much of anything. I majored in something called communication arts."
"Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work."
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