suicide

They called our arrangement a 'Death Pact' - but, really, that's not a phrase that tells you anything important. It's just the kind of phrase that sells newspapers. For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, that his suffering was not going to become unendurable (...).

He were found drowned. He were coming home very hopeless o' aught on earth. He thought God could na be harder than men; mappen not so hard; mappen as tender as a mother; mappen tenderer. I'm not saying he did right, and I'm not saying he didn't wrong. All I say is, may neither me nor mine ever have his sore heart, or we may do like things.

. . .the most important philosophical question we can each ask ourselves is, __o I or do I not wish to commit suicide?_ If we say, __o I do not,_ as most of us would, it is because we have reasons for living, or at the very least real hope that we can find such reasons. Then the next question is: what are the reasons I personally have for saying __o_ to that question? The answer contains the meaning of my life.

I decided that life rationally considered seemed pointless and futile, but it is still interesting in a variety of ways, including the study of science. So why not carry on, following the path of scientific hedonism? Besides, I did not have the courage for the more rational procedure of suicide.

To make yourself something less than you can be - that too is a form of suicide.

If I can__ quite figure out what an ego is, all I have to do is look for the thing that__ killing itself in the very act of feeding itself.

I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.

I am weary of this notion of faithfulness to a point of view at all cost. Life around us is ever changing, and I believe that one should try to change one__ slant accordingly__t least once every ten years. The great heroic devotion to one point of view is very alien to me__t__ a lack of humility. Mayakovsky killed himself because his pride would not be reconciled with something new happening within himself__r around him.

She didn't struggle and so she didn't grow

Only ever doing what feels comfortable is a form of suicide.

Far rather would she that he were dead! She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would not kill himself; and she could tell no one. "Septimus has been working too hard"___hat was all she could say to her own mother. To love makes one solitary, she thought. She could tell nobody, not even Septimus now, and looking back, she saw him sitting in his shabby overcoat alone, on the seat, hunched up, staring. And it was cowardly for a man to say he would kill himself, but Septimus had fought; he was brave; he was not Septimus now. She put on her lace collar. She put on her new hat and he never noticed; and he was happy without her. Nothing could make her happy without him! Nothing! He was selfish. So men are.

She__ sworn she wouldn__ end up like her little brother, but loneliness didn__ arrive with flashing bulbs and a warning label. The descent was as simple and complex as a faked smile, white lies about being __kay,_ and the nod and acceptance as her own peers didn__ delve deeper, shutting the coffin lid for her.

A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide.

I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away _ yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ___________ and wanted to shoot myself.

The whiskey was a good start. I got the idea from Dylan Thomas. He's this poet who drank twenty-one straight whiskeys at the White Horse Tavern in New York and then died on the spot from alcohol poisoning. I've always wanted to hear the bartender's side of the story. What was it like watching this guy drink himself out of here? How did it feel handing him number twenty-one and watching his face crumple up before the fall of the stool? And did he already have number twenty-two poured, waiting for this big fat tip, and then have to drink it himself after whoever came took the body away?

Honestly, if I stay on this gruelling path, I'm going to end up as another suicide statistic.

The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.

Love gives insight, Maggie, and insight often gives foreboding. Listen to me, let me supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes, be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.