On Suicide

There was a time when we romanticized life, and it fell to those among us who were particularly clear-headed, or particularly brave, to insist on death's inevitability. For these men self-destruction was the rational answer - one they could neither accept nor disprove.

If we have reasoned our way back to life now, if we have come to accept the logical necessity of saying yes because it is the only choice we are allowed to make, then this knowledge has only served to make suicide more seductive. For where survival is the proper choice, choosing death is the ultimate fantasy.

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Am reading Joan Wickersham's The Suicide Index (which is on the shortlist for the National Book Award for non-fiction). You can read the first chapter here and another extract here.