The Slow Quiet Attrition of Time

"When he had thought of death before, he had thought of it either as a literary event or as the slow, quiet attrition of time against imperfect flesh. He had not thought of it as the explosion of violence upon a battlefield, as the gush of blood from the ruptured throat. He wondered at the difference between the two kinds of dying, and what the difference meant; and he found growing in him some of the bitterness he had glimpsed once in the living heart of his friend David Masters."

~Stoner by John Williams, pg. 41. Originally published in 1965.