Don’t you want to be alive before you die? - Anthony Doerr

That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that.

Maybe he was dead and this island was purgatory from which he could only watch the souls of the more deserving go shuttling past to their various Edens. What is death, after all, but a cessation of involvement with the world, a departure from those you love, and those who love you?

It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.