Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire – in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?
Dead
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.
The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they – and as taciturn.
In the tight belly of the dead, Burrow with hungry head, And inlay maggots like a jewel.
To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.
Science trumps magical thinking: there was a reason the Incas called their mercury mine ‘la mina de los muertos,’ the mine of the dead. Building a life and a community upon principles that ignore such realities is doomed to fail.
Before the Civil War, there were no national cemeteries, no processes for identifying the dead in the battle. There weren’t any dog tags, and there was no next-of-kin notification. You didn’t necessarily even hear what the fate of your loved ones had been. It was up to their comrades to write and inform you.
I am still of opinion that only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mood – sex and the dead.
You are done for – a living dead man – not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.
The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.