after a long time, just to say

"Please believe that I am falling apart.

I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug - that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious dust. This is why i have decided to confide in paper, before I forget. (We are a nation of forgetters.)"

-Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

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"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever." "

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods

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"More people also crowd into dangerous areas for frivolous reasons. They build homes at the bases or tops of large cliffs for a scenic view, not realising that large portions of the cliffs can give way in landslides or rockfalls. They long to live along edges of sea cliffs where they can enjoy the ocean view, or they want to live along the beach to experience the ocean more intimately. Others build beside rivers that are picturesque or seem soothing. Far too many people build houses in the woods because they enjoy the seclusion and scenery of this natural setting.

Some experts who are concerned with natural catastrophes say that such people have chosen to live in an "idiot zone". People who deliberately choose to live in hazardous areas might as well choose to park their cars on a rarely used railroad track. Trains don't come frequently, but the next one might come any minute."

-Hyndman and Hyndman, Natural Hazards and Disasters, 2nd Ed.