Samuel Beckett
At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive—‘I’m glad I’m not dead!’ sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, ‘Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?’ to which Beckett answered, ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that.’)
“The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)” New York Times, July 6, 2013.