Death
Bewildered by the fame he had longed for, and under pressure to turn out another bestseller, he found himself with a crippling case of writer's block. "I don't know how I wrote Mister Roberts," he admitted to a friend. "It was spirit writing". He became an insomniac and tried to cure it with increasing amounts of alcohol and prescription drugs. On 19 May 1949, Heggen drowned in his bathtub at age 30 after an overdose of sleeping pills. His death was ruled a probable suicide, though he left no note and those close to him insisted it was an accident.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Heggen
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.... Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.”
—Michael Drayton (1563–1631)
“The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)