"An entire mythology has grown up around the process of dying. Like most mythologies, it is based on the inborn psychological need that all human kind shares. The mythologies of death are meant to combat fear on the one hand and its opposite - wishes - on the other." Chapter 1, page 8.

"Death with dignity is our society's expression of the universal yearning to achieve a graceful triumph over the stark and often repugnant finality of life's last sputterings." Chapter 1, page 10.

"So commonly do the coronary arteries betray the heart whose muscle they are meant to sustain, that their treachery is the cause of at least half of all deaths in the United States." Chapter 2, page 22.

"Everybody is required to die of a named entity." Chapter 3, page 43.

"Like the face of a weather-beaten old man, a heart looks its age. It acts its age as well. There is no...