Anthony Bourdain‘s suicide was being discussed this morning on a certain Facebook thread, and I chimed in with the following: “I don’t think I’d have the courage to commit suicide. Especially by hanging myself with a necktie…good God. I’m too terrified of the nothingness of death, the infinite flatline, the eternal void, the sleep from which there’s no waking. Under the shroud of death there’s no pain, burdens or anxieties, of course, but I gladly accept them on a daily basis as the price for being alive. We all have a rendezvous with death, but I want to live forever. No kidding. I could be suffering through the worst day of my life, and I still couldn’t off myself.”

Concisely stated by Woody Allen: “I don’t want to live on through my work — I want to live on by not dying.”