Departure[s]

I am aware that shortly I shall exist as only a shelf-ful of books plus a cluster of Biographical Anecdotes. And life is not a tragedy with a happy ending, despite what religion promises; rather, it is a farce with a tragic ending, or, at best, a light comedy with a sad ending.

Incurable yet manageable’, that sounds like … life, doesn’t it? Though there are, inevitably, some dreamers who attempt to evade this existential equation. They tend to be the ultra-rich, who also indulge in space travel and paranoid fantasies. For them, the way out of death’s trap is to be found in extending the length of human life, reversing the process of ageing, and transporting us (though these para-dreamers will get the first seats out) to some planet where our breathing will be slowed and we shall live for much, much longer. In the meantime we trash the only planet we have, and make life unliveable for future generations.

The head and the heart are still working, as the body declines. But better that way around.

When first thinking seriously about death, I came up with an image for it: not as something that awaits us, a terminus at the end of a journey, an arrival from which there will be no further departure. Rather, I thought of it as always being there, on a set of parallel tracks alongside my life. And at any point some unexpected set of points might bring it swerving across my path to obliterate me.

Men (and most of these bizarre activities were undertaken by men) can be most ingenious, even - or especially - when it goes against their own best interests.

We can and should trust novelists when they tell us the beautiful lies of their fiction.

All writers want their words to have an effect. Novelists want to entertain, to reveal truth, to move, to provoke reverie. And beyond? Do they want their readers to act as a result of their words? It depends.

She looked at me dismissively. ‘Oh, stop saying wise things that aren’t true.

For instance: where it went wrong was that Stephen believed he was still in love with Jean, and probably was, and Jean could neither accept his love nor return it, which showed either integrity or practical wisdom or harshness on her part.

But I think the great novelists understand love, and most aspects of human behaviour, better than, say, psychiatrists or scientists or philosophers or priests or lonely-hearts columnists.

All deaths inflict collateral damage. The dying person will soon feel nothing, while the griefstruck will be irradiated for years to come. Yes, I could see why Terry said, ‘It’s worse for Joanna,’ even while I stubbornly insist that it was and is worse for him. ‘But having been in Joanna’s position and fully experienced grief, I now think I have the easier job, which is to die (and I trust I’ll get a little help with that). What I am, not most, but heavily afraid of, is the grief I shall impose on R.

shall fit a plug into the wall; and listen to the past. I shall turn up August 1890. I feel that strong emotion must leave its trace; and it is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves again attached to it