394

I rolled onto my back again and made my voice casual.

“If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it.”

Cal seemed pleased. “I've often thought of that. I'd blow my brains out with a gun.”

I was disappointed. It was just like a man to do it with a gun. A fat chance I had of laying my hands on a gun. And even if I did, I wouldn't have a clue as to what part of me to shoot at.

I'd already read in the papers about people who'd tried to shoot themselves, only ended up shooting an important nerve and getting paralyzed, or blasting their face off, but being saved, by surgeons and a sort of miracle, from dying out right.

The risks of a gun seemed great. “What kind of a gun?”

Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar (:175)

393

Do you know what constitutes a great poet? He is a person without shame, incapable of blushing. Ordinary fools have moments when they go off by themselves and blush with shame; not so the great poet.

...Do you know what Victor Hugo did in 1870? He wrote a proclamation addressed to the people of this planet in which he strictly forbade the German troops to besiege and bombard Paris. “I have grandsons and other members of my family here, and I don't want them to be hit by shells,” he said.

Hamsun, Mysteries (:44)