The renowned novelist, essayist, preacher, thinker considered four influential writers
who helped answer life's most perplexing questions [ G.M. Hopkins, G.K. Chesterton, M. Twain a.k.a. Samuel Clemens, and W. Shakespeare ]
FROM Page 160 in the afterword (pages 157-161)
Death, on the other hand, seems less of a negative to me now than it once did.
If somebody a while back had offered me a thousand more years, I would
have leapt at it, but at this point (n.b. he was 75) I would be inclined to beg
off on the grounds that, although I continue to enjoy things a good deal
most of the time and hope to go on as long as I can, the eventual end
to life seems preferable to the idea of an endless and endlessly
redundant extension of it. The only really sad part of checking out as
I think of it now is that I won't be around to see what becomes of my
grandchildren, who are the light of my life, the oldest of them only
seven at this writing. But maybe that is just as well.
They say that we are never happier than our unhappiest child, and if
that is expanded to include the next generation down, the result
is unthinkable. . There is sadness too in thinking how much more
I might have done with my life than just writing, especially considering
that I was ordained not only to preach good news to the poor,
but to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned,
and raise the dead.
If I make it as far as St. Peter's gate, the most I will be able to plead is
my thirty-two books, and if that is not enough, I am lost.
