Phil Elverum Quotes

There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.

When death has you by the throat, you don't mince words.

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

You've gotta know what death is to know life!

Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death.

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.

People assume that death hanging over my head would allow me to put things into perspective, but that's not how it works.

It is better to die once than to be always in fear of death.

Once you've stared death in the face, every day is a good day.

To be in touch with death, and the darker side of life, makes the lighter side more enjoyable.

One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.

We tend to take a great deal for granted, because you feel like you're going to live forever. It's only if you lose a friend, or maybe have a near-death experience, [that] many events and people in your life suddenly attain real significance.

Every fear is fear of death.

I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die,” she said. “I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live.

If I were a maker of books I should compile a register, with comments, of different deaths. He who should teach people to die, would teach them to live.

...Proximity to a noose danger and death ... can make man or woman appreciate things.

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.

We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.

I'm not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Death is a sniper. It strikes people you love, people you like, people you know - it's everywhere. You could be next. But then you turn out not to be. But then again, you could be.