Quotes About Mortality

When you know that something is dying inside you, you learn not to put much trust in the random vitalities of the fleeting moment.

I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore.

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.

One insight was that the ordinary physical world through which one shuffled heedless and half-assed toward nonentity was capable of composing itself, at any time and without notice, into a massive instrument of agonizing death.

Ingesting poison, fighting for food, being attacked by a larger rat or beaten with a toilet plunger: these are everyday rat dangers that make the life expectancy of the rat in the city approximately one year.

Once we know, on a deep level, that we must die, we choose, in various ways, purposely to give up our life in order to dispel the unbearable feelings of helplessness and dread.

If you've never felt that you quite got a hold of it, you just feel that before you die, you've got to try and get it right once. And hope that the experience you have makes up for the some of the diminishing energy.

She kept to her bed only for the last two days, and did not stop conversing peaceably with everyone. Finally, no longer speaking, and already in the throes of agony, she made a big fart. 'Good,' she said, 'a woman who farts is not dead.' These were the last words she pronounced.

Llegará un día en el que alguien pronunciará por última vez nuestro nombre en el mundo. Es el instante de la muerte definitiva.

Lo que yo quiero, es ser admirado de los demás, elogiado de los demás [...]. Pero esta vida mediocre... ser olvidado cuando muera, eso sí que es horrible [...] sin embargo, algún día me moriré, y los trenes seguirán caminando, y la gente irá al teatro como siempre, y yo estaré muerto, bien muerto... muerto para toda la vida.

Acaso la vida es otra cosa que la aceptación tranquila de la muerte que se viene callando?

Este cañón puede matar, este cañón puede destruir - y la convicción de haber creado un peligro obediente y mortal me enajenaba de alegría.

Había enflaquecido extraordinariamente en pocos días. La piel amarilla, pegada a los huesos planos del rostro, le daba la apariencia de un tísico. Más tarde la autopsia reveló que estaba ya avanzada la enfermedad en él.

The diseased, anyway, are more interesting than the healthy. The words of the diseased, even those who can manage only a murmur, carry more weight than those of the healthy. Then, too, all healthy people will in the future know disease. That sense of time, ah, the diseased man's sense of time, what treasure hidden in a desert cave. Then, too the diseased truly bite, whereas the healthy pretend to bite but really only snap at the air. Then, too, then, too, then, too.

We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.

Drink up, boys, drink up and don't worry, if we finish this bottle we'll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won't be the same as the one we've got now, but it'll still be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don't make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time pases, don't you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.

Qué lástima que pase el tiempo ¿verdad?, qué lástima que nos muramos y que nos hagamos viejos y que las cosas buenas se vayan alejando de nosotros al galope.

I am dying now, but I still have many things to say.

While he was waiting, leaning on the counter at a coffee place, he remembered the dream he'd had the night before about Antonio Jones, who had been dead for several years now. As before, he asked himself what Jones could have died of, and the one answer that occurred to him was old age. One day, walking down some street in Brooklyn, Antonio Jones had felt tired, sat down on the sidewalk, and a second later stopped existing.

All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.

I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they're outside of time, are the only ones with time. After the last rereading (just now), I realize that time isn't the only thing that matters, time isn't the only source of terror. Pleasure can be terrifying too, and so can courage.

Toda vida, le dijo esa noche Epifanio a Lalo Cura, por más feliz que sea, acaba siempre en dolor y sufrimiento. Depende, dijo Lalo Cura. ¿Depende de qué, buey? De muchas cosas, dijo Lalo Cura. Si te pegan un balazo en la nuca, por ejemplo, y el pinche asesino se acerca sin que lo escuches, te vas al otro mundo sin dolor y sin sufrimiento. Pinche escuincle, dijo Epifanio. ¿A ti han pegado muchos tiros en la nuca?

When it left, death didn't even close our eyes.

Leer es aprender a morir, pero también es aprender a ser feliz, a ser valiente.