You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can’t care anyway. Steve Biko, On Death, I Write What I Like, 1978
I don’t believe in the afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. Woody Allen
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. Woody Allen
It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune. Woody Allen
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens. Woody Allen, Death, 1975
There are worst things in life than death: have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman? Woody Allen
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. Woody Allen
Diane Keaton: What do you believe in?
Woody Allen: Sex and death. Sleeper 1973 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & John Beck & Marya Small & Susan Miller & Mary Gregory & Don Keefer & Peter Hobbs & John McLiam & Bartlett Robinson & Chris Forbes & Brian Avery & Jackie Mason et al, director Woody Allen
No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of they friends of thine own were; an man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. John Donne, 1572-1631, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII, 1624
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. John Donne, 1572-1631, Holy Sonnets, 1609
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death thou shalt die. ibid.
9,386. Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,
Which brings a taper to the outward room. John Donne, Of the Progress of the Soul: The Second Anniversary
When I asked if there was anything she wanted, her answer was that she wanted nothing but death. Cassandra Austen, letter to Fanny Knight, re Jane Austen’s last illness
O, that it were possible,
We might but hold some two days’ conference
With the dead! John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, 1623
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin. T S Eliot, Whispers of Immortality
A useless life is an early death. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Let us think of them that sleep,
Full many a fathom deep,
By thy will and stormy steep,
Elsinore! Thomas Campbell, Battle of the Baltic
Only we die in earnest, that’s no jest. Walter Ralegh, c.1552-1618, On the Life of Man
O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! … thou hast drawn together all the farstretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet. Walter Ralegh, The History of the World, 1614
Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the optics of these eyes to behold felicity; the first day of our jubilee is death. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici
He forgets that he can die who complains of misery, we are in the power of no calamity, which death is in our own. ibid.
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases. ibid.
We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits which are the house of life. ibid.
When I die I’m going to have a jam session. And knowing me, I’ll probably get busted at my own funeral. And I’ll try to get Miles Davis along if he feels like making it. The music will be played loud. And it will be our music. Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child
When I die just keep on playing the records. ibid.
I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to. Jimi Hendrix, Axis: Bold as Love
We are continually dying. Petrarch
The good die young – because they see it’s no use living if you’ve got to be good. John Barrymore
I love death ... It’s a beautiful thing, death. It’s such a relief. Just imagine if there wasn’t any death. Marianne Faithfull, interview 1968
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome
Let me die a youngman’s death
Not a clean and in-between –
The sheets, holywater death,
Not a famous-last-words
Peaceful out-of-breath death. Robert McGough, 1967 poem
Death is still working like a mole,
And digs my grave at each remove. George Herbert, Grace, 1633
Death is nothing at all; it does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Henry Scott Holland, English theologian, sermon 1910
While there is death there is hope. Richard Crossman, 1907-74, on death of Hugh Gaitskell 1963 & favourite phrase of Harold Laski
Finally he paid the debt of nature. Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, 1516
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget. Christina Rossetti, When I am Dead, 1862
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land. Christina Rosetti, Remember
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead. Theodore O’Hara, The Bivouac of the Dead
And though poets I admire have published poems
Whose imperfections reflect our own decay,
I could never being a poem; ‘When I am dead’
In case it tempted Fate, and Fate gave way. Robert McGough, poem 1982
Thought crime is death. 1984 1984 starring John Hurt & Richard Burton & Suzanna Hamilton & Gregor Fisher & Cyril Cusack & James Walker & Andrew Wilde & Corina Seddon & Rupert Baderman & John Boswall & Phyllis Logan et al, director Michael Radford
Faith disappears. Doubt becomes obsessive. Death becomes your best friend, man’s only friend because it will deliver you from your suffering. August von Kageneck, cited Apocalypse – The Second World War: Shock
One day Lara went out and did not come back … She died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list that was afterwards mislaid. Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
Even death is unreliable: instead of zero it may be some ghastly hallucination such as the square root of minus one. Samuel Beckett, attributed