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She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man
may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a
woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present
time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape.
There is only a death, indefinitely postponed. This is
not fantasy, it is history.

 

Margaret Atwood

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He was not condemned to death, freedom awaited
him. What was the temptation, the one that worked?
Perhaps he wanted to live with a woman whose life
he had saved, who had seen down into the earth but
had nevertheless followed him back up to life. It was
his only chance to be a hero, to one person at least,
for if he became the hangman the others would
despise him. He was in prison for wounding another
man, on one finger of the right hand, with a sword.
This too is history.

 

Margaret Atwood

 

In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with
wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the
hangman.

 

Margaret Atwood

 

It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance.

 

William F. Buckley

 

I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.

 

Socrates

 

At last, after muche reasoning, when no reason woulde serue, although he deserued no death, he was…brought forth to the place of execution, was there tied to ?e stake, and then strangled first by the hangman, and afterward with fire consumed in the morning at the towne of Filford, an. 1536. crieng thus at the stake with a feruente zeale, and a loud voyce: Lord open the King of Englands eyes.

 

John Foxe