My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

We all die, we all get sick, we all feel hunger and lust and pain, and therefore human life is consistent from one generation to the other. We all – most of us, anyway – want connections with other people and spend our lives looking for them.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I’m just more sexually attracted to women. But I’m really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

I’m sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

We cannot fashion our children after our desires, we must have them and love them as God has given them to us.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom… in a clarification of life – not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion.

I feel only my friends and family need to know what is happening in my personal life.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

And why not death rather than living torment? To die is to be banish’d from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish’d from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!

I’m very picky; I’m never happy with anything. It’s so hard to give the record away and accept that you’re done.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.

If I died tomorrow, I would be a happy girl.

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‚real‘ world.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family’s doctor should be – and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it’s lasting me very well.

All you need to do to be my friend is like me.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

All diseases run into one, old age.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

The way I try to represent my family and coaches, I think all are characteristics the league aspires to portray. That’s just who I am.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.