How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
I remember the first time I understood what it was to die. I was nine. [...] The faucet had a leak, and with every drip I felt my life ebbing away. One day it would be all gone. The joy of being alive became so concentrated in me I wanted to scream. (7.49-50)
Is this as unexpected as it may seem, that a growing sense of mortality would make someone overwhelmingly grateful to be alive?
Quote #8
That, in a nutshell, was the end of my preoccupation with death. Not that I stopped fearing it. I just stopped thinking about it. (7.60)
Is it possible to fear something without thinking about it? What would that look like, or feel like?
Quote #9
At the end, all that's left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that's why I've never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that's why I hoarded the world: with the hope that, when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived. (10.29)
Compare this sentiment to how humiliated Litvinoff feels when he sees that Gursky's obituary is much better than his own, before realizing that "A person's death belongs to no one but the one who's died" (6.28). What's with his preoccupation with possessions? How can death itself be a possession too?