Santiago Nasar had often told me that the smell of closed-in flowers had an immediate relation to death for him.
I’m not afraid of death, but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine, but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.
I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.
As a day well spent makes sleep seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A life well spent is long.
