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1 " Why had he done it? It had been an idea of the morning—morning ideas were always flawed. They never take into account the accretion of weariness and grief that the late day brings. "
― Jesse Ball , The Divers' Game
2 " What kind of suicide is it to kill in the world what you find in yourself? "
3 " Do the places we inhabit confine us by their very nature? Are we always imprisoned, eternally imprisoned, in body, in place, in community, do even our minds imprison us? What would it be like to be free, even for a second? Is that death? Do we live only in that final moment when we flee our shape? "
4 " There is a feeling that we are things in common not alone. That I am myself in terms of you, and you you in terms of others. Together we make a world and go on in this sea of days and months. In this picture no one is their own--everyone is everyone else; our bodies are the possession of our society. We might own things but never ourselves. Yet I think there is a different duty. "
5 " My revulsion at this place of our lives--this society of which we are a part--seems not to immediately admit an obvious truth: the people who are ground to bits by our horrific thoughtlessness, selfishness, greed, though they may not know in each case why it has happened, they do not need to know. These things have happened so often that it becomes clear: a man like this did not die because of what he did but because of what he was. We are the ones who have the privilege of having things happen to use because of what we do. Not everyone is so lucky. "
6 " I was wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. Everyday life is the province of death. It is where all dying takes place--for the extraordinary lands we imagine simply do not exist. There is only the ordinary. It is what we inhabit, and when death comes to find us it is there that he looks. "
7 " That anything could be done to those without rights. There is a philosophical position that came into vogue, it is what we call in philosophy an awakening, a large-scale shift in belief: that things done to those beneath are not properly violence. It was a new definition of violence, and helped to create a vibrant morality, one that infuses our nation to this day. Our morality is what we do. Do you all understand that? But if what we do ceases to be violence, let us say it is the same, but it is no longer violence, then we are not violent; we are no longer does of violence. "
8 " These things have happened so often that it becomes clear: a man like this did not die because of what he did but because of what he was. We are the ones who have the privilege of having things happen to us because of what we do. Not everyone is so lucky. "
