One of a kind. Even his critics couldn't deny his special view of the world and his ability to articulate complex thoughts so that twits like me understand them. What a fascinating guy, and a life well spent.
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stephenfry Stephen Fry Goodbye, Christopher Hitchens. You were envied, feared, adored, reviled and loved. Never ignored. Never bested. A great and marvellous man
couldnt have said it better.
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of course our friends from the Phelps clan weigh in...
a$$hats
MargieJPhelps MargiePhelps
.@60Minutes made the record of Christopher Hitchens'rebellion.Now he's dead&in hell.He knows God&His wrath are real.So do u! #picketfuneral
Booker prize-winning author Rushdie paid tribute to his “beloved friend” on Twitter. He wrote: “Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. "Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011."
Comedy writer Danny Baker added: “The news of Christopher Hitchens' death somehow still a jolt. “A fierce and raging light goes out.”
Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, wrote: "We shall miss you, your voice, your pen, & most of all your mind Christopher. "The world is better because of you."
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious. "I worked as an intern for him years ago. My job was to fact check his articles. Since he had a photographic memory and an encyclopaedic mind it was the easiest job I've ever done. "He will be massively missed by everyone who values strong opinions and great writing."
Speaking on the BBC's Today program, writer Ian McEwan said Hitchens had continued to write even as he became more and more ill. "Right at the very end when he was feeble when his cancer overwhelmed him, he insisted on a desk by his window. There he was, a man with only a few days to live, turning out 3,000 words to meet a deadline."
Vanity Fair has Hitchens' last essay online, for its January issue, in which the author writes of how "before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to "do" death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span. However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there's one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that
'Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger'."
The New Statesman has Hitchens' final interview, with Dawkins ("If I was strident, it doesn't matter - I was a jobbing hack, I bang my drum"); the New Yorker a long and moving piece from Christopher Buckley remembering his friend, poetry, drinks, lunches, opinions, all of it. "One of our lunches, at Café Milano, the Rick's Café of Washington, began at 1 P.M., and ended at 11:30 P.M. At about nine o'clock (though my memory is somewhat hazy), he said, "Should we order more food?" I somehow crawled home, where I remained under medical supervision for several weeks, packed in ice with a morphine drip. Christopher probably went home that night and wrote a biography of Orwell. His stamina was as epic as his erudition and wit."
pennjillette Penn Jillette ChristopherHitchens, my friend, my hero, my inspiration. He will live on, honestly, through his work, our memories, and our love. Bye.
Last edited by Cheese; 12-16-2011 at 08:28 AM.
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"The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals." – God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 2007
"My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either." – God Is Not Great
"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more." – The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, 2007
"I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information." – Hitch-22, 2010
"What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime." – Hitch-22
"Cheap booze is a false economy." – Hitch-22
"Where would you like to live? In a state of conflict or a conflicted state?" – Hitch-22
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Tragic day – I read God is Not Great this past summer and thoroughly enjoyed it. I will remember him most for this fantastic eloquence with language and his uncanny ability to put some of my thoughts and feelings into words in a way I never could.
Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”
One sometimes hears of people who try to model their writing or their persona on Christopher Hitchens’ example. The results are usually absurd and sometimes perverse. Christopher did not offer a model of what to think. He offered a model of how to think – and how to live. Fully. Fearlessly. Joyously. And then, alas too soon, of how to die: without bluster but without flinching, boldly writing until the fingers moved no more. National Post
"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is
atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the
siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with
all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more
intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure,
feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want
nothing more."
-- Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for
the Non-believer
Also one of my favorite images of him.
__________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!
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knew this was coming, but still sad. What a brilliant man.
