“How to live. How to die. How to reach back with understanding, even as we were going beyond the ones we’d loved. In that perpetual minute which I believed might be my last, time past spread itself out like a quilt. Life didn’t flash before my eyes, mechanically, movie-fast. Instead, I took it in my hands and held it to the light. Studying its pattern and rips and repairs. Determined – if only for my own self-respect – to die wise, clear-sighted. The most awake I’d ever been.”

The Cure for Sleep: a late-waking life