
“I plan on not dying, but if I have to, I want to die in Liverpool.”
Spin magazine (2008)
Source: Alone (1938), Ch. 1
Context: What I had not counted on was discovering how closely a man could come to dying and still not die, or want to die. That, too, was mine; and it also is to the good. For that experience resolved proportions and relationships for me as nothing else could have done; and it is surprising, approaching the final enlightenment, how little one really has to know or feel sure about.
“I plan on not dying, but if I have to, I want to die in Liverpool.”
Spin magazine (2008)
Neil Perry character
Context: Modified passage from the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Full citation:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."
“I lived like a man who wanted to die but who had no courage to do it himself.”
Source: Interview with the Vampire
In Bitter American Exile, the Shah's Twin Sister, Ashraf, Defends Their Dynasty (1980)
“O starry night, This is how I want to die”
Source: The Complete Poems
“"Better to die because of you, rather than dying still!"
(from Domani si adesso no, 1985)”
Song lyrics
Testimony before subcommittees of the U.S. Senate, April, 1971
“What? You run? Coward! Stand still and die!”
Percy had no intention of doing that.”
Source: The Son of Neptune