“I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death.”
Nobody gets out of here alive, and these quotes do not pretend otherwise. What they offer instead is honesty — about grief, legacy, fear, acceptance, and the strange way that thinking about death can make you more serious about living.
“People always say that pregnant women have a glow. And I say it's because you're sweating to death.”
“I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than the excess in too much the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death.”
“I mean, death is a serious thing, certainly not to be sneezed at.”
“I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.”
“Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion. It's still better than high school.”
“Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.”
“There is nothing glamorous about death.”
“Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.”
“Death is an absolute marvel.”
“In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.”
“Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A. if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.”
“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”
“In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.”
“Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.”
“After your death you will be what you were before your birth.”
“Bulls can do nothing to demand justice. They can only defend themselves as best they can in a fight with a pre-determined ending and die never knowing why they were forced to endure such a painful and prolonged death. It's up to us, as a civilized society, to call for an end to the Running of the Bulls and bullfighting.”