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- Christopher Hitchens
- 2012
- “To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?” ― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality.
- “The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.”
- “It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory” ― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality.
- “For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.”
- Selected Quotes from Hitch 22
- Quotes from Mortality
- Christopher Hitchens with Salman Rushdie at 92Y
- Quotes from ‘Unspoken Truths’ – Vanity Fair
- Quotes from ‘Topic of Cancer’ – Vanity Fair
- Quotes from Charlie Rose Interview
- Quotes from Jeremy Paxman Interview
- Remembering Christopher Hitchens – Charlie Rose
- Christopher Hitchens: Mini-Bio
- References
On Suicide
The prologue and early chapters of Hitch 22 are shaped by Hitchens’ reflections on mortality. His efforts to explain and codify types of suicides reflect his torment about his mother, Yvonne’s death and, true to form, Hitchens never misses an opportunity to take a swipe at religion. Initial reports of his mother’s death in Athens indicated she had been slain by a lover who had then taken his own life. However, when Hitchens’ arrived in Athens to take care of the formalities, he was confronted...
A stoic death
Hitchens makes clear his respect for his father, a British Naval Commander, and the other men and women who survived the deprivations of World War I and The Great Depression and then opposed totalitarian aggression in World War II. His father’s war was dangerous and arduous. Commander Eric Hitchens, serving aboard HMS Jamaica, had escorted convoys to Russia through Nazi controlled waters. Hitchens describes his father as a dour and stoic man of Calvinist origins who was a poor match for his m...
Life and death in journalism
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, invited Hitchens to become a regular columnist in 1992. Hitchens was impressively remunerated but expected to “write about, or to undergo, anything”. In the service of journalism, Hitchens underwent waterboarding and bikini waxing. But he also found himself in life-threatening situations in war zones. He wrote: “On the most recent occasions when I have faced either torture or death, the circumstances were either dubious or avoidable.” On one occasion in...
Mortalitycomprises a series of essays Christopher Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair concerning his struggle with cancer. The final chapter consists of previously unpublished, unfinished jottings on the matter. Mortality was published posthumously in 2012. “I don’t have a body, I am a body.” “To the dumb question ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to ...
Salmon Rushdie was a close friend of Christopher Hitchens’. When they sat down to discuss Hitchens’ memoir, Hitch 22, on 8th June 2010, Rushdie had no idea that Hitchens had been told he had cancer that very day. Circumstances concerning the suicide of Hitchens’ mother were discussed. Hitchens said he would never find closure in the matter, nor did...
Unspoken Truths was published in the June 2011 edition of Vanity Fair, a year after Hitchens was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and six months before his death. “My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they offer to come it’s only for the blessed cha...
‘Topic of Cancer’ is an introspective essay by Hitchens published in the August 2011, edition of Vanity Fair following his cancer diagnosis. In it, he describes his journey “from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.” The new land is welcoming but has shortcomings: the cuisine is poor, there is not tal...
“I think all the time I’ve felt life is a wager and that I was probably getting more out of leading a Bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t. So, writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that – or prolongs, enhances and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation – is worth it to me, sur...
“Do I fear death? No. I’m not afraid of being dead, that’s to say there’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t know I’m dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I’m alive in any way at all, well, that’ll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises. But I strongly take leave to doubt it. I mean, one can’t live without fear, it’s a ques...
On 13th April 2012, Salman Rushdie, James Fenton, Ian McEwan and Martin Amis – close friends of Christopher Hitchens – sat down with Charlie Rose to reminisce about Hitchens’ life. At the end of the discussion, Rose asked James Fenton to write the first line of Hitchens’ obituary. Fenton said: “He was the spirit of 68 . . . the revolutionary spirit...
Christopher Eric Hitchens, born on 13th April 1949 in Portsmouth, England, was an English-American intellectual, social and political critic, polemic writer and public speaker. Hitchens’ father, Eric Hitchens, was a British naval commander who lived with his family in Malta, during Christopher’s formative years. Christopher’s mother, Yvonne, was Je...
Hitchens C. Hitch-22. New York: Twelve; 2010. Christopher Hitchens with Salman Rushdie: Hitch 22. 92Y (June 8, 2010). 92Y, New York (June 8, 2010) [online] Available at: https://www.92y.org/archives/christopher-hitchens-with-salman-rushdie-hitch-22.aspx. Published 2010. Accessed May 9, 2021. Christopher Hitchens Interview. Charlie Rose (August 13, ...
I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of. Christopher Hitchens. Fear, Dying, Waste. I'm dying, but so are you. Christopher Hitchens. Inspirational, Dying.
Dec 16, 2011 · British American essayist and avowed atheist Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday, Dec. 15, at age 62, and he saw it coming. "Death is certain," he wrote in The Portable Atheist, "replacing both ...
Sep 5, 2012 · Christopher Hitchens, who died in December 2011 from complications related to esophageal cancer, was a columnist for Vanity Fair, and the author of Hitch-22...
Nov 24, 2016 · He identified as a fundamental optimist, saying “There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” His lessons can be learned both through life and the end of it.
It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.”
