Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.

People are unaware of what is going on. When I talk to people, they know the basics, they know the planet is warming because of greenhouse gases… but they don’t know the actual consequence of that.

I think hygiene is so important.

I did not, thank the Lord, have to have a hysterectomy.

People were asleep, but I think they’re waking up now. Trump has given everybody a good kick, and people are waking up and realizing they’ve got to get involved.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

I’ve stopped drinking, but only while I’m asleep.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily… thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn’t always follow what was going on.

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

Let me ask you a question: If you never ate a balanced diet, what would happen to your body? You know the answer: Eventually you’d grow weak; you might even open yourself to serious illness or disease. We all need a balanced diet if we are to stay healthy.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

We all knew this. We all knew that it would take more time than any of us want to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

The dieting wars have got to stop.

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, to strive to live completely in the present is to strive for what already is the case.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

I learned early to drink beer, wine and whiskey. And I think I was about 5 when I first chewed tobacco.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

I make it a rule never to smoke while I’m sleeping.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror – not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can’t swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it’s what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he’s going to get sick on it.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

Don’t get old, if you can avoid it.

We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.

How much better it would be if all could be more aware of God’s providence and love and express that gratitude to Him.

I think for my bones and my size, I better stay with my 60 kilo.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.