Djuna Barnes

“ Yet how imagination can obsess! It is the truth that the lights of the windows -- pictures of a city's skyline -- the walls, the men, all went out into a great blank as the doctor leaned down. Then suddenly the dark broke into a blotch of light, as he trailed the electric bulb up and down and across my face, stopping to examine my throat to make sure I was fully capable of swallowing. ”

“ Science had, then, deprived us of the right to die.
Still the liquid trickled irresistibly down the tubing into my throat.
Was my body so inept, I asked myself, as to be incapable of further struggle? Was the will powerless to so constrict that narrow passage to the life reservoir as to dam the hated flow? The thought flashed a defiant command to supine muscles. They gripped my throat with strangling bonds. Ominous shivers shook my body.
'Be careful -- you'll choke,' shouted the doctor in my ear.
One could still choke, then. At least one could if the nerves did not betray. ”

“ The three took me not unkindly, but quite without compassion, one by the head, one by the feet; one sprawled above me, holding my hands down at my hips.
All life's problems had now been reduced to one simple act -- to swallow or to choke. As I lay in passive revolt, a quizzical thought wandered across my beleaguered mind: This, at least, is one picture that will never go into the family album. ”