Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of
life as an inexhaustible well. Yet, everything happens only a certain number of
times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a
certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of
your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four
or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch
the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Paul Bowles, "The Sheltering Sky"
