The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“Death happens to all of us.”
“Death happens to all of us.”
“I’m alive. When I’m eating that’s all I think about. If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day as any to die. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life is the moment we are living now.”
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“Do you believe in the mystical, the fantastical, the improbable, or the impossible? Do you believe that things others dismiss as dreams and imagination actually exist? Do you believe in fairy tales?”
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“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
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