Lives cut short

Started reading two books that I got from the library last week....

The Collected Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield (13th printing, 1976, Knopf)
and
Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis by Dan Rockmore (more about this book here.)

Katherine Mansfield (14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923), about whom the famed author, Virginia Woolf is claimed to have said - her writing was 'the only writing I have ever been jealous of.'

and

Berhard Riemann (November 17, 1826 – July 20, 1866), a giant in the field of mathematics, on whose shoulders Einstein's general relativity theory and many of the advances of quantum physics rests.

Coincidentally, the lives of these two prodigious talents were cut short prematurely by the scourge that continues to plague human kind in many areas of the world - tuberculosis.

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It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. - Virginia Woolf