„I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear.“

„I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.“

—  June Jordan Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist 1936 - 2002

"Many Rivers To Cross" (1981); later published in Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)
Context: I wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be weak again as long as I lived. I thought about my mother and her suicide and I thought about how my father could not tell whether she was dead or alive.
I wanted to get well and what I wanted to do as soon as I was strong, actually, what I wanted to do was I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.
And I thought about the idea of my mother as a good woman and I rejected that, because I don't see why it's a good thing when you give up, or when you cooperate with those who hate you or when you polish and iron and mend and endlessly mollify for the sake of the people who love the way that you kill yourself day by day silently.
And I think all of this is really about women and work. Certainly this is all about me as a woman and my life work. I mean I am not sure my mother’s suicide was something extraordinary. Perhaps most women must deal with a similar inheritance, the legacy of a woman whose death you cannot possibly pinpoint because she died so many, many times and because, even before she became my mother, the life of that woman was taken; I say it was taken away.

„If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.“

—  Terry Pratchett English author 1948 - 2015

Final lines of his Richard Dimbleby lecture Shaking Hands With Death on euthanasia and assisted suicide, quoted in "Terry Pratchett: my case for a euthanasia tribunal" in The Guardian (2 February 2010) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/02/terry-pratchett-assisted-suicide-tribunal
General sources
Context: I dare say that quite a few people have contemplated death for reasons that much later seemed to them to be quite minor. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.
Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

„I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees.“

—  Ernesto Che Guevara Argentine Marxist revolutionary 1928 - 1967

„And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art.“

—  Salman Rushdie British Indian novelist and essayist 1947

Address at Columbia University (1991)
Context: "Our lives teach us who we are." I have learned the hard way that when you permit anyone else's description of reality to supplant your own — and such descriptions have been raining down on me, from security advisers, governments, journalists, Archbishops, friends, enemies, mullahs — then you might as well be dead. Obviously, a rigid, blinkered, absolutist world view is the easiest to keep hold of, whereas the fluid, uncertain, metamorphic picture I've always carried about is rather more vulnerable. Yet I must cling with all my might to … my own soul; must hold on to its mischievous, iconoclastic, out-of-step clown-instincts, no matter how great the storm. And if that plunges me into contradiction and paradox, so be it; I've lived in that messy ocean all my life. I've fished in it for my art. This turbulent sea was the sea outside my bedroom window in Bombay. It is the sea by which I was born, and which I carry within me wherever I go.
"Free speech is a non-starter," says one of my Islamic extremist opponents. No, sir, it is not. Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

„I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people.“

—  John Lennon English singer and songwriter 1940 - 1980

„In a culture, you can choose fear or love. It’s been my experience and my observation that humans on this planet feel more comfortable with fear rather than love and openness… I do know what history tells us about humans. And humans, they actually don’t feel very comfortable with openness and freedom.“

—  RuPaul Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros 1960

Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)

„Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life“

—  Bertolt Brecht, The Mother

Pelagea Vlasova in Scene 10
The Mother (1930)
Variant: Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.
Source: Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays: Includes: In Search of Justice; Informer; Elephant Calf; Measures Taken; Exception and the Rule; Salzburg Dance of Death

„I fear feeling my heart break a second time, because I'm not sure I could survive it. I'd rather live alone than risk the pain.“

—  Nora Roberts American romance writer 1950

Source: Face the Fire

„I feel like a big faker because I've been putting my life back together, and nobody knows.“

—  Stephen Chbosky, book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

„All my life, I have lived with the feeling that I have been kept from my true place. If the expression "metaphysical exile" had no meaning, my existence alone would afford it one.“

—  Emil M. Cioran, book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

„Do not fear death, but rather the unlived life. You don't have to live forever. You just have to live.“

—  Natalie Babbitt American children's writer and illustrator 1932 - 2016

Variant: Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.
Source: Tuck Everlasting: Scholastic Book Guides

„Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.“

—  Jean Cocteau French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker 1889 - 1963

„Where had thy life been at this hour,
Had not my Love been more than my Power? —
Away, if thou fearest, — love never must,
Never can live with one shade of distrust.“

—  Letitia Elizabeth Landon English poet and novelist 1802 - 1838

(1825-2) Antony and Cleopatra. An Anecdote from Plutarch
The Monthly Magazine

„All my life I've known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?“

—  John F. Kennedy 35th president of the United States of America 1917 - 1963

Conversation with Theodore C. Sorensen concerning the Bay of Pigs Invasion; as quoted in Sorensen's Kennedy (1965), p. 309.
Attributed

„I was born in the south of India but I've never lived there. I went to school in Bombay, and in Hong Kong and in New York. But the place I've lived in the most is Bombay, because I've been there at various stages of my life.“

—  Jeet Thayil Indian writer 1959

On his being asked Where was he born?

„I'll never be happy. I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself. I'm really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I've been a failure. I just want to escape.“

—  Mike Tyson American boxer 1966

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/boxing/2005-06-02-tyson-saraceno_x.htm?csp=34
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1654125,00.html
On himself

„Oh, for the sake of momentum
I've allowed my fears to get larger than life.“

—  Aimee Mann American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960) 1960

"Momentum"
Song lyrics, Magnolia: Music from the Motion Picture (1999)
Context: Oh, for the sake of momentum
I've allowed my fears to get larger than life.
And it's brought me to my current agendum
Whereupon I deny fulfillment has yet to arrive.And I know life is getting shorter,
I can't bring myself to set the scene.
Even when it's approaching torture,
I've got my routine.

„She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with a chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently.“

—  Jonathan Safran Foer, book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

„I spit on my life.
Death in battle would be better for me
than that I, defeated, survive.“

—  Gautama Buddha philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism -563 - -483 BC

This statement is made in reference to his battle against the personification of temptation to evil, Mara.
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down), Sutta 3.2. Padhana Sutta