Bokelskere.no

Living forever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of divorce.

'This, for me, is a key feature of storylessness: all structures must contain the possibility of their own non-existence -- some zip that undoes them.' She smiled. 'The storyless story is a vagina with teeth.'

There’s a group of fishermen on a tropical island. Every day they get up when they feel like it, go out on their boats and catch enough fish for themselves and their families, and perhaps for anyone they know who is ill and can’t make it out that day. They all have gardens where they grow everything else they need. When they are done fishing, they play with their children, or have a game of cards, or read books in the sunshine. Every night they eat their fish and then go around to one another’s houses and tell stories or have parties. One day, an American comes for a holiday on the island - they don’t get many tourists there, but the location has just featured in some book of “unspoilt destinations” or something like that. He looks at the way they live, and then says to one of the men, who has taken him out on a fishing trip, “You know, you’re missing out on all kinds of opportunities here. If you organised yourselves into a company, you could spend more time fishing, and export the surplus that you don’t need to live on, and you could build bigger houses and have your own swimming pools and trust funds for your kids and you could get yourself some proper clothes and travel the world. Soon you wouldn’t need to fish for yourselves; you could employ other people to do it. Eventually - imagine this - you could retire with a million in the bank and then…” “Then,” finished the fisherman, “I suppose I could afford to go on a holiday like yours, and find true peace and harmony by simply fishing in the sunshine.”

What was wrong with sitting around eating pizza if it made you happy and you didn't hurt anyone? Why was this worse than, say, slaying a dragon or rescuing a maiden? The idea of a thousand years of adventure just made me feel tired.

Living for ever would be like marrying yourself, with no possibility of a divorce.