Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director
The Six Best Jokes From Wednesday Night's Chris Rock Show at MSG, 2008-05-02, 2008-05-05, New York Magazine http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/05/the_five_best_jokes_from_chris.html, <br class="br">Miscellaneous
“I want death to find me planting my cabbages.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.
Book I, Ch. 20
Essais (1595), Book I
“The will must not only despise death, it must love it; for chastity is the love of death.”
Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) German poet and philosopher
Source: Philosophie der Erlösung, Erster Band (2014), Ethik, § 26 ISBN 978-1494963262
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer
Spoken on his deathbed to his sister-in-law, Sophie Weber (5 December 1791), from Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words by Friedrich Kerst, trans. Henry Edward Krehbiel (1906)
Variant: The taste of death is on my tongue, I feel something that is not from this world (Der Geschmack des Todes ist auf meiner Zunge, ich fühle etwas, das nicht von dieser Welt ist).
“If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist
Portraying a fictional conversation of Nicholas Saunderson with a priest, in ' Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter about the Blind] (1749), as quoted in Diderot and the Encyclopædists (1897) by John Morley, p. 92. Publication of this work resulted in Diderot being arrested and imprisoned.
“They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not.”
Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) Austrian composer
As quoted at The Cult of Genius http://archive.is/20130407013238/thecultofgenius.tumblr.com/post/11315919381/they-want-me-to-write-differently-certainly-i <br class="br">Context: They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to Him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed the others and not Him?
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
Variant: I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.
