“Life is a predicament which precedes death.”

“The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.”

“Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us. ”

“Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.”

“There it lay, fixed in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, willful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.”

“For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”