Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake — especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.
It's not getting to the land of the dead that's the problem. It's getting back.
Death has a curious way of reshuffling one's priorities.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Why should I sail with any of you? Four of you have tried to kill me in the past. One of you succeeded.
— Does it hurt? Dying?
— Quicker than falling asleep.
Life is cruel. Why should the afterlife be any different?
When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor.
He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands.
And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did.
I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did.
He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did.
He was individual.
He was an important man.
I've never gotten over his death.
Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died.
How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands.
He shaped the world.
He did things to the world.
The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.