Quotes About Mortality

All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.

When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty.

There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead.

All my life I have arrived early only to find myself standing self-consciously on a corner, outside a door, in an empty room, but the closer I get to death the earlier I arrive, the longer I am content to wait, perhaps to give myself the false sensation that there is too much time rather than not enough.

All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.

I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time. (245)

I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, it would be on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands in the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I'll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.

And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)

Why is it that there was always a unit on history, math, science and god knows what other useless, totally forgettable information you taught those seventh graders year after year, but never any unit on death? No exercises, no workbooks, no final exams on the only subject that matters?

I thought: I didn't live forever.

HE LIKED TO COOK AND LAUGH AND SING, COULD START A FIRE WITH HIS HANDS, FIX THINGS THAT WERE BROKEN, AND EXPLAIN HOW TO LAUNCH THINGS INTO SPACE, BUT HE DIED WITHIN NINE MONTHS

I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, I'd bet on the delivery boy from the Chinese take-out. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands in the door holding a greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I'll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack.

Exista nenumarate feluri de a fi viu, dar un singur fel de a fi mort.

Sometimes, teachers must be hard. People must be given a hard message because life is hard, and dying is hard

Whether or not you can imagine your own death, it seems quite natural to be at least a bit afraid of not existing.

Poets should be ashamed To die Before they kiss The sun

I don't fear death; I welcome it with open arms and a smirk. But until that wondrous day, I will continue to savor and celebrate all those who have graduated before me.

only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality…

The by far greater number of human beings are never aware of what is passing around and within them, and millions fall victims of disease and die prematurely just on this account.

Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.

Life's true face is the skull.

My son, I carry on as if I should never die.' I replied: 'And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.

Leave nothing for death but a burned-out castle