I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on unfulfilled hopes and aspirations for the future, particularly in relation to personal milestones and societal events.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens expresses a deep sense of concern and frustration over the possibility of not being able to witness significant life events and changes. It highlights the human desire for longevity and the hope to see one’s plans and dreams come to fruition, whether personal (like watching children get married) or cultural (like witnessing the rebuilding of landmarks after tragedy). Through this reflection, Hitchens underscores the importance of life itself and the bitter realization that time may cut short the ability to experience these milestones.
In practice
In a eulogy, one might use this quote to reflect on the dreams the deceased had for the future.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I'm a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I've lived my life backwards.
A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.
I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.
Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh ... without destroying that moment.
Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.
No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
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