"If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?"
- Charles de Lint, Svaha

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."
- A. Sachs

"It gets under your skin, life. ... It's a habit that's hard to give up. One puff of breath is never enough. You'll find you want to take another."
- Terry Pratchet, Hogfather

"I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel."
- Gloria Naylor

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov

"Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you."
- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"My time is probably short in the larger scheme of things, but the day is long."
- Rev. Webster "Kit" Howell

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."
- Robert Frost

"Life is just one damned thing after another."
- Elbert Hubbard

Death & Dying

"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
- Woody Allen

"When life has become futile, meaningless, unendurable -- it must be allowed to end."
- Q, Star Trek: Voyager

"There is a good way to die, and a right time to do it. An odd thought for this time of year -- this is the point where the world has meandered back into spring, back into life. The sun is pulling fresh green from the ground again. An odd time to think about death, but as good time as ever to die."
- James Lileks, columnist

"Modern death is a matter of bright rooms and hard machines. Live long enough, and you might be filed away in a nursing home, your history scoured away, your life winnowed down to a few items on the table and some pictures of people who don't come around enough.
When you are about to pass on, there is no quiet to attend you: busy fuss and professional zeal strive to bring you back, nail you to the soft cross of the rented bed."
- James Lileks

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done;
it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"Remember where you came from, where you are going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.
Take your dying with some serious, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy."
- Richard Bach, Illusions

"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
- Sir James M. Barrie

"Firstly, there no such person as Death.
Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians.
Third, he doesn't exist either."
- Neil Gaiman, The High Cost of Living

"Dying is a part of living -- a natural progression. Should I ignore the natural order of my life, twist it to MY liking and thereby become something I was not meant to be?"
- Charles de Lint, The Little Country

"This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot."
- John Cleese/Monty Python, Episode 8

"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts
and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more."
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

"Clearly, I would want all my children to die in a state of joy. I mean, what more could I ask for? I would prefer it was not at age 7 but, God, she went with her joy and her passion, and her life was in her hands."
- Lisa Blair Hathaway, whose daughter died trying to become the youngest cross-country pilot

"If there's another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this."
- Robert Burns

"Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished:
If you're alive, it isn't."
- Richard Bach, Illusions

"Death is a tragedy ... but only for the living. We who have died go on to other things."
- Charles de Lint, Into the Green

"Kill me to-morrow; let me live to-night!"
- William Shakespeare, Othello

"Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live."
- Dorothy Parker, "Resume"

"They say such nice things about people at funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."
- Garrison Keillor

"Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said 'Thank God, I'm still alive.' But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again."
- Rep. Barbara Boxer, D-California

"Do not go gentle into that good night. ... Rage, rage against
the dying of the light."
- Dylan Thomas

"Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it."
- William Somerset Maugham

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokeswoman for a federal anti-smoking campaign

"Sometimes I think I'd be better off dead. No, wait. Not me, you."
- Jack Handey

"Defeat is worse than death because you have to live with defeat."
- Bill Musselman

"Without death and decay, how would life go on?" - John Burroughs

"Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me."
- John Donne

"It is death that causes this blinding show of color, but it is a fierce and flaming death."
- Charles Kuralt

Self-Preservation

"Laughing in the face of danger is not a survival strategy."
- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

"Come not between the dragon and his wrath."
- William Shakespeare, King Lear

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him."
- J.R.R. Tolkein

"You didn't jump in the river. How sensible of you."
- Mrs. Banks to Mr. Banks, Mary Poppins

"It was kind of boring for me to have to eat. I would know that I had to, and I would."
- Kate Moss

"You can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be 100."
- Woody Allen

"Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."
- Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."
- Charles Schulz

Age & Immortality

"The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever."
- Herb Caen

"The tree remains, but not the hand that planted it."
- Irish saying

"If you live to the age of 100 you have it made because very few people die past the age of 100."
- George Burns

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work;
I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen

"Every decade, people get exactly 10 years older."
- Harold Hodgkinson, educational demographer

"Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind. You are as old as your doubt, your fear, your despair. The way to keep young is to keep your faith young. Keep your self-confidence young. Keep your hope young."
- Luella F. Phean

"Immortality consists largely of boredom."
- Zefrem Cochrane, Star Trek

"Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up our enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."
- Samuel Ullman

"Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres."
- John Drybred

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne

"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."
- Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune

"Retirement at 65 is ridiculous. When I was 65 I still had pimples."
- George Burns

Question: "If you could live forever, would you and why?"
Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever,
because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever,
but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."
- Miss Alabama, 1994 Miss Universe contestant

"I've always found that the best way to be immortal is not getting yourself killed, like the best way to avoid divorce is not getting married."
- Tom Holt, Paint Your Dragon

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
- Abraham Lincoln

"You and I are past our dancing days."
- William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

"We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey."
- Stephen Covey

"There are no happy endings. There are no real endings ever -- happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just a part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others' stories -- perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years -- and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on."
- Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot

"Unitarians may disagree about life after death and life before birth.
But we all know there is life after birth. That's what we've got to focus on."
- Rev. Webster "Kit" Howell, Unitarian minister

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -- you see, I have friends in both places."
- Mark Twain

"He had been dead a long time.
With a profound sense of shock he realized he was no longer dead.
Beyond an increasingly vivid sense of self he was still aware of the tender network from which he was being separated. From its fabric those who were dear to him reached out, calling to him, seeking one more communion.
Do not abandon me! he cried to them. Follow me, find me!
Tightening around him, existence throbbed with the pulsing of a giant heart. He was expelled into lightlessness, he was tumbled into the unknown.
Down and down he spun.
Gradually he began recalling long-forgotten concepts such as direction and distance and time. Concentrating on them, he found himself spiraling amid stars. Constellations bloomed around him like flowery meadows.
He reached out, hungry for the suddenly remembered sensation of touch ... and slipped and slid and came to rest in a warm chamber lit by a dim red glow.
There he lay dreaming. Sheltered and content, he was suspended between worlds, floating on tides regulated by the rhythms of a universe. In this building-time he sorted among his memories, deciding which to keep. So few could be retained and it was hard to anticipate which he might need most. Yet a voiceless command urged him to remember, remember....
He drifted and dreamed until the pounding began. Shocked, he tried to fight back, but he was seized and squeezed and ultimately ejected into a place of hard surfaces. A burning flood poured into his nostrils and open mouth.
The infant used that first breath to scream his outrage."
- Morgan Llywelyn, Druids