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About this quote

What does it mean?
Understanding death often comes too late when it is already too late.
In plain terms
You only really get death when something bad happens.
What can you take from it?
Death is best understood through experience, not theory.

Where it applies

  • facing loss
  • philosophy
  • trauma

Putting it to work

  • accepting mortality
  • living fully
  • processing trauma

Questions to consider

  • How do you prepare for loss?
  • What does fear teach you?

Another view

This view can be overly cynical or dismissive of intellectual preparation.

More from Stephen King

  1. I think it's relatively easy for people to accept something like telepathy or precognition or teleplasm because their willingness to believe doesn't cost them …

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  2. Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.

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  3. ...the Lot's knowledge of the country's torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little tow…

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