“Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.”

Letter of March 1538. (Merriman, ii. p. 129.)

Emmett, from Gringos
True Grit (1968)

Pt. VIII, ch. 19
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Source: Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 123
Context: Some people think that we are stuck in physical reality like flies in flypaper or victims in quicksand, so that each motion we make only worsens our predicament and hastens our extinction. Others see the universe as a sort of theater into which we are thrust at birth and from which we depart forever at death. In the backs of their minds people with either attitude will see a built-in threat in each new day; even joy will be suspect because it, too, must end in the body's eventual death. I used to feel this way. When I fell in love with Rob, my joy served to double the underlying sense of tragedy I felt, as if death mocked me all the more by making life twice as precious. I saw each day bringing me closer to a total extinction that I could hardly imagine, but which I resented with growing vehemence.

The Race of My Life: An Autobiography Milkha Singh (2013)

Letter to his son, George Mason V. (8 January 1783)