Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved.

A good death. Well, he thought, given that you had to die, why want a bad one?

Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!

...how easy it was to stay alive now that he didn't care about being alive anymore. (p39)

This done, he felt a little—not much, but a little—better. Before, he would have gladly murdered Beach and James and danced on their graves. Now, he would have been satisfied with straight murder.

He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.

He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty, than live for bread.

He grunted with satisfaction. The feel of the hilt cheered him and gave him a glow of confidence. Whatever webs of conspiracy were drawn about him, whatever trickery and treachery ensnared him, this knife was real. The great muscles of his right arm swelled in anticipation of murderous blows.

He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.

Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be nothing but rest, and he was filled with a momentary astonishment that he should have made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter of getting killed.

Oh, it's so good to be dead!

They asked Julius Caesar, the valiant Roman emperor, what was the best death. He answered, that which is unexpected, which comes suddenly and unforeseen