“I’d rather be a live pessimist than a dead comedian.”

“I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead.”

“I’d a million times rather live and risk and have it all end badly than stay in the box I’ve been in for the past two years.”

“I would much rather have a living husband with no job and no gold than a dead one.”

“We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content.”

“But when they were done, I wondered if there would be a next time. I felt good. I wasn’t dead, yet something was dead. Perhaps I’d managed my peculiar objective of partial suicide. I was lighter, airier than I’d been in years.”

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”

“What’s broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I live…I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over.”

“My healthiest transformation was going vegan. … I don’t think words can describe seeing an animal tortured like [in factory farms]. It’s unethical, and it’s something I want to fight against. You are what you eat, and I’d rather be a fruit than a dead, rotting carcass.”

“Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.”