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About this quote

What does it mean?
Life and death are not small or temporary parts of existence but major realities.
In plain terms
Life and death are complete, not just sections of a story.
What can you take from it?
Treat life and death as whole experiences.

Where it applies

  • grief
  • mortality reflection
  • writing

Putting it to work

  • acknowledge finality
  • write honestly about life

Questions to consider

  • How do you view death?
  • Is life a story or a whole?

Another view

The metaphor may oversimplify complex views of death.

More from E. E. Cummings

  1. wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a better fate than wisdom

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  2. Here life is, moves; faintly. A wrist. The faint throb of blood, precise, miraculous . . . And they talk of dying! The blood delicately descending and ascendin…

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  3. a man who had fallen among thieves lay by the roadside on his back dressed in fifteenthrate ideas wearing a round jeer for a hat

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