Quotes About Mortality

There's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die.

why do we make it all seem like a crisis, over and over again? Why do we worry it all to death, like dogs with socks or chew-toys? 'Look at it this way...In a hundred years? - All new people.

In general, though, there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this. Sometimes

So while I do not expect to get over much, I know that my motley, beloved friends and I have only a short time together left on this merry-go-round, as it spins around the sun, rises and falls. At the same time, these friends are all sort of a marvelous mess: perfect and neurotic, driven and gentle, self-centered and crazily generous, fully alive and probably on their way out. They are chipped and slightly faded works of art, and they are the exact horse I've longed for, all my life.

Robert Burns said it best: "Life is but a day at most.

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying gives us a chance to experience some real presence.

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

In general, though, there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

Dying people can teach us this most directly. Often the attributes that define them drop away—the hair, the shape, the skills, the cleverness. And then it turns out that the packaging is not who that person has really been all along. Without the package, another sort of beauty shines through.

I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying give us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children.

Death is...usually doable, astonishing but plain.

Marcus Aurelius said that we are little souls carrying around corpses.

It is okay to fear death. Many people who don't can be a little too pleased with themselves.

It must be an amazing mind-set, Afra thought, to consider one's self the only being of worth in the galaxy. There had been Humans who had had such delusions. They had generally died because of them

The years are cruel. They rob us of our health and our friends and our hopes, and give nothing back. - Pg. 146

Death from hunger happened a hundred yards from death from obesity.

I'm so sorry, my dear," she said quietly. "It's a shock, even though he was old. Pieces of our lives being chipped away reminds us of our own fragility, and how precious life is.

Death was pain and sickness, and terror of the long, blind, last step.

After all, the God she believed in cared for every soul, and what happened to the body left behind mattered not at all.

And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually... it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life... every second of it... Is all we have.

Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?... Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?

I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over any lips, my hands!