Stephen King, the master of horror fiction and one of America's best-selling authors, delivered the commencement address at Vassar College in 2001. In a speech that surprised many with its earnest focus on philanthropy rather than storytelling, King stripped away the mythology of wealth with this blunt observation about mortality. King used this line to set up his central argument: that since you can't take it with you, the question isn't whether to give but how much and to whom. Having survived a near-fatal accident in 1999 when he was struck by a van while walking, King spoke with the clarity of someone who had confronted his own mortality. The experience had sharpened his conviction that accumulating wealth without sharing it is fundamentally pointless.