“Life and death live and die in exactly the same spot, the body. It is from there that both babies and cancers are born.”

“I still smart a little at the slight. When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling. My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition. I mock this skull. I look at it and I say, "You've got the wrong fellow. You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. Move on!" The skull snickers and moves ever closer, but that doesn't surprise me. The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity -- it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.”

“I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.”

“No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.”

“I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.”

“You may not believe in life, but I don't believe in death. ... The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity--it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.”

“The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.”