Quotes About Mortality

He'd been obsessed with dying when he was a small boy. He'd banged his head against the pillow in an attempt to drive away the thoughts. How was it possible not to exist? How could he not exist? As a teenager, the preoccupation was still there, but he'd hidden it more skilfully, turning the obsession into an intellectual pose, a cloak to hide his real terror.

Rick supposed there were worse ways to go than a fatal heart attack. Anything, surely, would be better than descending into dementia like Ken. The cloudy eyes and unfocused thoughts, the restless twitching of the hands. That was surely a kind of death. It was as if Ken was disappearing almost before their eyes but becoming at the same time deeper and more nuanced.

Annie found herself being drawn into the conversation despite herself. She'd been terrified of dying since she was a child. Not the reality of pain or illness, but the idea of the world going on without her.

I'm just at the age when time speeds up in an odd way. Do you know what I mean? The winters come closer together and you learn to accept that you're not special anymore.

It is eerie being all but alone in Westminster Abbey. Without the tourists, there are only the dead, many of them kings and queens. They speak powerfully and put my thoughts into vivid perspective.

I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod. Oh, and since this is England, I had better add, 'If wet, in the library.' Who could say that this is bad?

You see your children growing. You look at your grandchildren, and you say to yourself, 'What if I weren't here? Have I done all I can to prepare them for their role in life?' You realize that you never quite do everything, but you want to do better than what you have done.

I mean, whatever kills you kills you, and your death is authentic no matter how you die.

I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.

I'm not afraid of flying; I just fear I'm going to die. I think I'm - vulnerable. I admit it. I don't fly. I got claustrophobia. I don't go in high buildings. I don't do those things. I'm just myself, whatever that is.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I'll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

The whole world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable, or at least satisfactory, can possibly be derived; and I long daily to die more and more to it; even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things which I earnestly desire.

I've got no idea when I am going to retire. Whenever they pick me up and take me to the funeral home, I guess.

Whenever you have large numbers of people who are dying for preventable reasons, that constitutes a public health issue.

I thought about dying whenever I got bad news about other people.

After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.

Whereas in America we are so fearful of mortality, we don't want to talk about it, we don't think about it, and in many ways we treat elderly people as invisible because they are a constant reminder of our own mortality. We put them away and put them in retirement homes so we don't want to deal with that.

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

However and wherever we are, we must live as if we will never die.

You know, I'm not gonna take my money with me to heaven or hell, wherever I'm going. So I want to do something good with it even though my means are very limited. I'm no millionaire!

I don't care much whether people remember me or not. If people remember, well and good. If they don't remember, it's alright - I'm dead anyway.

One of the most beautiful things about Shakespeare's Hamlet is when he stops in the middle of the play to ask, 'To be or not to be?' Then, right at the end, he decides to 'let be.' The first season of 'Stranger Things' was Hopper asking whether 'to be or not to be' and the second is to 'let be.'

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.