"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.”
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.
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Terry Pratchett 796
English author 1948–2015Related quotes
“I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees.”
“I have made my choice, Hori. I will share my life with you for good or evil, until death comes…”
With his arms round her, with the sudden new sweetness of his face against hers, she was filled with an exultant richness of living.
Death Comes as the End (1945)
“I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”
“Great God, and you witnesses of my death, I have lived as a philosopher, and I die as a Christian.”
Last words, according to his friend the Prince de Ligne (Mémoires et mélanges historiques et littéraires, book IV, p. 42 http://www.google.com/books?id=upYBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA42&q=%22Grand+Dieu%22, translated for instance in: The Freeman, p. 224 http://www.google.com/books?id=mmkQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Great+God%22+%22and+I+die+as+a+Christian%22)
After the announcement of the death sentence.
Source: Bartłomiej Kuraś, Witold Pilecki – w Auschwitzu z własnej woli, „Ale Historia”, w: „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 22 kwietnia 2013.
“My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it.”
My Life Has Been a Poem I Would Have Writ
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday
Address to the National Book Awards Committee, published in My Works and Days (1979)