"I have no objection to my books being immortal. I wrote them in such a way that nobody could delete a single word. To resist every kind of adversity. But I myself, as a human being, as Ernest Hemingway, I don't give a damn about immortality!"
"I understand you very well, Ernest. But you should have been more careful while you were still alive. Now it's too late."
"More careful? Are you referring to my boastfulness? I admit that when I was young I loved to blow my own trumpet. I loved to show off in front of people. I enjoyed the anecdotes that were told about me. But beleive me, I wasn't such a monster as to do it on account of immortality! When I realized one day that this was the point of it all, I panicked. From that time on I must have told people a thousand times to leave my life alone. But the more I pleaded the worse it got. I moved to Cuba to get out of their sight. When I won the Nobel Prize I refused to go to Stockholm. Believe me, I didn't give a damn about immortality, and now I'll tell you something else: when I realized one day that it was holding me in its clutches, it terrified me more than death itself. A man can take his own life. But he cannot take his own immortality.
-Immortality
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