1. “Disgust with our own”: Voltaire, “Cato: On Suicide, and the Abbe St. Cyrian’s Book Legitimating Suicide,” Online Library of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/voltaire-the-works-of-voltaire-vol-iv-philosophical-dictionary-part-2?q=cato+on+suicide#.
2. “Do we ever say”: Susan J. Beaton, Peter Forster, and Myfanwy Maple, “The Language of Suicide,” Psychologist 25, no. 10 (2012): 731.
3. “My ‘failed attempts,’”: Ibid.
4. “As health professionals”: Ibid.
5. “This approach is limited”: Matthew K. Nock et al., “Measuring the Suicidal Mind: Implicit Cognition Predicts Suicidal Behavior,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (2010): 511.
6. “The presence of an implicit”: Ibid., 514–15.
7. “a wise man will”: Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Letter 70, trans. Richard M. Gummere (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920).
8. “If he disposes of”: Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
9. “slay his own best”: The Dialogues of Plato, Laws IX, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Random House, 1920).
10. “the life of a man”: David Hume, “Of Suicide,” manuscript in the National Library of Scotland with corrections in Hume’s own hand, text provided by Tom L. Beauchamp; David Hume, “To John Home of Ninewells,” in The Letters of David Hume, ed. John Y. T. Grieg (1757; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932).
11. I’m reminded of: Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings, Book II, 6th ed., trans. David R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge, UK: Loeb Classical Library, 2000).
12. “However great a man’s”: Graham Greene, The Comedians (1966; New York: Penguin Classics, 1991).
13. A few decades ago: Thomas Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (New York: Hoeber-Harper, 1961).
14. “a misleading slogan characteristic”: Thomas Szasz, “The Case against Suicide Prevention,” American Psychologist 41, no. 7 (1986): 808.
15. “Where there is no freedom”: Ibid., 809.
16. Six months after Szasz: Melanie Hirsch, “Home on the Hot Seat,” Post-Standard, February 19, 1992, http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/09/dr_thomas_szasz_critics_discus.html.
17. “It would seem certain”: Thomas Joiner, Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 88.
18. Would you identify as: Brian L. Mishara and David N. Weisstub, “Ethical and Legal Issues in Suicide Research,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 28, no. 1 (2005): 23–41.
19. In a yearlong study: Garen J. Wintemute et al., “Mortality among Recent Purchases of Handguns,” New England Journal of Medicine 341, no. 21 (1999): 1583–89.
20. “Hanging in most cases”: Michael J. Kral, “Postcolonial Suicide among Inuit in Arctic Canada,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 36, no. 2 (2012): 310.
21. Adding catalytic converters: Robert Evan Kendell, “Catalytic Converters and Prevention of Suicides,” Lancet 352, no. 9139 (1998): 1525.
22. Bridge barriers erected: Annette L. Beautrais, “Effectiveness of Barriers at Suicide Jumping Sites: A Case Study,” Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 35, no. 5 (2001): 557–62.
23. “Many young suicide attempters”: Urs Hepp et al., “Methods of Suicide Used by Children and Adolescents,” European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 21, no. 2 (2012): 72.
24. After a lonely Bay Area: Tad Friend, “Jumpers: The Fatal Grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge,” New Yorker, October 13, 2003, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/13/jumpers.