Life & Mortality Quote by Ruth Park

Risk isn’t romanticized here; it’s stripped down to a blunt actuarial fact. “He who climbs a cliff may die on the cliff, so what?” lands with the cold click of a ledger closing. The “so what?” isn’t nihilism so much as refusal: refusal to let fear claim veto power over a life. Park frames danger as ordinary, almost procedural, the price of admission to anything that rises above the flat ground.

The second line is the pivot that gives the first its ache. “Always a risk-taker by nature, now I became one by intent” distinguishes temperament from choice. Nature is the hand you’re dealt; intent is the moment you stop pretending you’re merely reacting. She’s talking about agency, but she’s also admitting the exhaustion of improvising bravery. If you’re “by nature” a risk-taker, you can hide behind personality. “By intent” is a moral posture: deliberate exposure, disciplined courage, a self-authored identity.

As an author, Park is quietly describing the writer’s bargain without dressing it up as inspiration. Writing - and the life that feeds it - asks for cliff edges: poverty, uncertainty, emotional exposure, the possibility of public failure. The cliff is literal enough to picture, but elastic enough to hold career, love, migration, and reinvention. The subtext is that safety is not neutral; it can be a slow kind of death. Park’s line works because it refuses melodrama while smuggling in something braver: the decision to live as if the risk is worth the view.