Mortality –– Christopher Hitchens

Author: Christopher Hitchens

Date Started: [[December 31st, 2021]]

Date Finished: [[March 8th, 2022]]

Type: Kindle

To the dumb question "Why me?", the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens #religion to the additional charge of corruption

It made me wonder if perhaps there was a room for a short handbook of cancer etiquette. This would apply to sufferers as well as sympathizers. [[Maybe You Should Talk To Someone - Lori Gottlieb]]

One almost develops a kind of elitism about the uniqueness of one's own personal disorder. [[pain]]

It's no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don't have a body, I am a body. #mind-body

If something is worth hearing or listening to, it's very probably worth reading. So this above all: Find your own voice

• The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed #reading

"He gave three reasons. Another agonizing stroke could hit him, forcing him to suffer it all over again. His family was being put through a hellish experience. Medical resources were being pointlessly expended."

• In his essay, he used a potent phrase to describe the position of others who suffer like this, referring to them as lying on "mattress graves".

I wondered if things looked as red and inflamed within as they did without.

It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory. It's also impossible to warn against.

But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less.

Whatever view one takes of the outcome being affected by morale, it seems certain that the realm of illusion must be escaped before anything else.

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.

Reference to [[Einsein's Dreams - Alan Lightman]]