"Yesterday morning my wife came to me and said, ‘How are you feeling?’ And I said, ‘I feel like I want to die.’ It was that bad."

"There comes a time where you have to make a decision as to whether you want to continue with such a low quality of life, or whether you want to just ease yourself into the next level. It doesn’t bother me in the least."

Said Alex Trebek, quoted in "Alex Trebek Is Still in the Game/In his new memoir, the longtime “Jeopardy!” host delivers clues and facts about himself, and looks back on his life as he struggles with advanced pancreatic cancer" (NYT).

Also:

“There’s a certain comfort that comes from knowing a fact,” Trebek said. “The sun is up in the sky. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to change that. You can’t say, ‘The sun’s not up there, there’s no sky.’ There is reality, and there’s nothing wrong with accepting reality. It’s when you try to distort reality, to maneuver it into accommodating your particular point of view, your particular bigotry, your particular whatever — that’s when you run into problems.”

And:

One morning last year, early in the course of his treatment [for pancreatic cancer], Trebek felt so sick that he lay down on the floor of his dressing room, sobbing from the pain. Producers suggested canceling the rest of the day’s tapings, but Trebek insisted on hosting all five episodes. When he walked onto the stage and greeted the audience, he felt focused, like himself....

“Once I introduce him on that stage, he is Alex Trebek,” said the longtime “Jeopardy!” announcer Johnny Gilbert. “You can tell that that’s what he’s living for.”

Here's the memoir: "The Answer Is …: Reflections on My Life" (out next week).