“Sometimes I forget that the world is not on the same schedule as I. That everything is not dying, or that if it is dying it will return to life, what with a little sun and the usual encouragement.”

“I used to be afraid of dying. Now I’m afraid of not living. There’s a difference. We go through life planning for a future, but sometimes that future never comes.”

“In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice.”

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

“There are four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living "for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is same. Only love.”

“Death is our best motivator in life. The idea of dying or not seeing the sun tomorrow will keep you up on your toes.”

“Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.”

“Authority forgets a dying king,
Laid widow’d of the power in his eye
That bow’d the will.”

“… I started to die 36 hours before I was born, so dying was a way of life for me.”

“I’m afraid I’m not a convert or anything. I still see the same blind cosmos governed by the same blind laws. But suddenly it matters. It matters terribly, and means something. What, I haven’t figured out yet. I probably never will. But I have a reason for living, or for dying if need be. Maybe that’s the whole purpose of life: purpose itself. I can’t say. But I expect to enjoy the world a lot more.”