They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lives mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. Tim OBrien
About This Quote

This quote from Philip Roth’s novel, Humboldt’s Gift, is a perfect example of how we try to keep death and dying at arm's length, as if we can just ignore it and pretend that it doesn't exist. The people in this story – a group of young artists – are all actors, and they’re just pretending to be dead. It's a very clever way of dealing with the reality of death, since it doesn’t actually hide the sadness. Instead, it makes death seem ridiculous.

Source: The Things They Carried

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