Quotes About Mortality

Where the finite player plays for immortality, the infinite player plays as a mortal. In infinite play one chooses to be mortal inasmuch as one always plays dramatically, that is, toward the open, toward the horizon, toward surprise, where nothing can be scripted. It is a kind of play that requires complete vulnerability. To the degree that one is protected against the future, one has established a boundary and no longer plays with but against others.

Although infinite players choose mortality, they may not know when death comes, but we can always say of them that "they die at the right time" (Nietzsche).

If I accept death as inevitable, I do not struggle against mortality. I struggle as a mortal. All the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.

Immortality is therefore the supreme example of the contradictoriness of finite play: It is a life one cannot live.

The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to continue the play in others. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game. Infinite players play best when they become least necessary to the continuation of play. It is for this reason they play as mortals. The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.

The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.

You get one life and it rolls out like a long hallway carpet. It begins on the day you are born and keeps on rolling until you drop. There's no refresh button, no start-over option.

They do not comprehend where they are going," Kaz said, whispering his words to the wind. I knew he didn't mean a particular place. There were no map coordinates to mark the location. He meant that point in time and space where bullet meets bone, where grown men cry rivers of tears; the point you can never return from, even if you live to be ninety.

A day is only a day. But a life is only a life.

Ars longa, vita brevis," she whispered, a quote from Hippocrates. One of her favorites. Life is short, art eternal.

For in this world, one life was enough for any man.

Ye who, passing graves by night, Glance not to the left nor right, Lest a spirit should arise, Cold and white, to freeze your eyes...

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.

One should not believe too strongly in a life which can easily vanish.

One should not believe too easily in a life which can easily vanish.

A great novel is the record of how a character fights with death.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more

The glories of our blood and stateAre shadows, not substantial things;There is no armor against fate;Death lays his icy hand on kings.

How little roomDo we take up in death that, living, knowNo bounds!

Death was easy. A piece of pie. That is the true horror.

People die all around us all the time. Drop like flies. Overdose. Aids. Sometimes they kill themselves. People come. They go. Dying is the same as rehab or moving back to Missouri. It just means I won't be seeing them again

Early to rise and early to bed Makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.

Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.

And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.