lists

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die.

– Umberto Eco

via Susanne Beyer and Lothar Gorris http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,659577,00.html