“The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death.”

“Why do anything-- why wash my hair, why read Moby Dick, why fall in love, why sit through six hours of Nicholas Nickleby, why care about American intervention in Central America, why spend time trying to get into the right schools, why dance to the music when all of us are just slouching toward the same inevitable conclusion? The shortness of life, I keep saying, makes everything seem pointless when I think about the longness of death.”

“Sometimes life seems like a match between oneself and one's gaolors. The gaolers, of course, are one's mistakes; and the question is, who'll hold out longest? When I think of that, life instead of being too long, seems as short as a winter day....”

“Life is too short when you think of the length of death”

“When everything seems to be set to show me off as intelligent, the fool I always keep hidden takes over all that I say.”

“When I'm lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me.”