"My
chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence
of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they
offer to come it’s only for the blessed chance to talk. Some of these
comrades can easily fill a hall with paying customers avid to hear them:
They are talkers with whom it’s a privilege just to keep up. Now at
least I can do the listening for free. Can they come and see me? Yes,
but only in a way. So now every day I go to a waiting room, and watch
the awful news from Japan on cable TV (often closed–captioned, just to
torture myself ) and wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be
fired into my body at two–thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for?
If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most
beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the
freedom of speech."
(Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, Loc. 543-49)
