Cioran on death

He was Eraserhead's dad, too

E. M. Cioran, a Romanian writer who wrote in French, died on this day in 1995. A sampling of Cioran on death and dying:

"What is neither healthy or natural is the frantic appetite to exist."

"To rid oneself of life is to deprive oneself of the pleasures of deriding it."

"I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the gods have been against me."

"Life and death have little enough content...We always know this too late, when it can no longer help us either to live or to die."

"So many memories that loom up without any apparent necessity -- of what use are they except to show us that with age we are becoming external to our own life, that these remote "events" no longer have anything to do with us, and that someday the same will be true of this life itself?"

Cioran's mother's last note to him ended: "Whatever people try to do, they'll regret it sooner or later."