Hitch 22

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews,
Not to be born is the best for man;
The second-best is a formal order,
The dance's pattern; dance while you can.

Dance, dancefor the figure is easy,
The tune is catching and will not stop;
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters;
Dance, dance, dance till you drop.
-Auden

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
-Richard Dawkins Unweaving the Rainbow

"Until you have done something for humanity, you should be ashamed to die." Well, how is one to stand that test?

nothing reminds one of impending extinction more than the growth of ones own children, for whom room must be made, and who are in fact one's only hint of even a tincture of a hope of immortality.

I personally want to 'do' death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

the fear of death distresses me- and I would not trust anyone who had not felt something like it

...if you felt strong enough about somebody and learned to take their desires, too, into account, the resulting mutuality and reciprocity would be much more than merely worthwhile.

alcohol for me has been an aspect of my optimisn

"Finally, brethren, whasoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think of these things."

if you have to try to persuade yourself of something, you are probably already very much inclined to doubt or distrust it.