They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. But they are not. And when they die, they (...) become dust and bone, and the… - Ursula K. Le Guin

O foolish writer. Now moves. Even in storytime, dreamtime, once-upon-a-time, now isn’t then.

“It is not right to want to die,” the Summoner said....“For the very old, the very ill, it may be. But life is given us. Surely it’s wrong not to hold and treasure that great gift!”
“Death also is given us,” said the king.

I don’t have a gun and I don’t have even one wife and my sentences tend to go on and on and on, with all this syntax in them. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after “semicolons,” and another one after “now.”

And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren’t. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man: I am not even young. Just about the time they finally started inventing women, I started getting old. And I went right on doing it. Shamelessly. I have allowed myself to get old and haven’t done one single thing about it, with a gun or anything.