Alan Ball Quotes

It doesn't take that many years for a kid to realise that they're going to die. It's always there in the back of their mind the rest of their lives.

We keep making the same mistakes as a species, and you can usually draw it back to the fact that we are all terrified of dying. We also all think that we are going to escape it until we get to 65!

I don't think kids have a problem with death. It's us older ones who are nearer to it, that start being frightened.

People are scared to death of dying. I am the opposite.

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed.

Lots of people there seemed to be in denial, in absolute denial, of death - everybody's pretending that death doesn't happen in L.A.; if you do enough exercise and take enough wheatgrass and have your pill every day, you might not die.

It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

The subject of death is taboo. We feel, perhaps only subconsciously, that to be in contact with death in any way, even indirectly, somehow confronts us with the prospect of our own deaths, draws our own deaths closer and makes them more real and thinkable.

The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world.

Of all living things, only humans consciously anticipate death; the consequent need to choose how to behave in its face - to worry about how to die - distinguishes us from other animals. The need to manage death is the particular lot of humanity.

I think ancient cultures incorporated death into the experience of life in a more natural way than we have done. In our obsessive focus on youth, on celebrity, our denial of death makes it harder for people who are grieving to find a place for that grief.

It's hard for me to get interested in stories that ignore death, which is what American marketing culture would like to do: pretend that death doesn't exist, that you can buy immortality; just buy these products, and you'll be forever young and happy.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

I might be deceiving myself but I do not think that I do have an inordinate fear of death.

Fear of death has never played a large part in my consciousness - perhaps unimaginative of me.

Denial of death at some point becomes a delusion.

I don't wake up saying, 'Oh, I'm going to die.' It's a waste of time. It really is.

Obviously, death is ahead of me. I don't look forward to dying one little bit. But, you know, I simply don't worry about it because it's going to happen to me as it does to anybody.

I thought that we all were afraid of death, but I've talked to my wife and other people, and they're not afraid of death the way I am. I find that really confusing. I don't like the idea of nothingness - that's terrifying to me.

There has been too much silliness and cliche when looking at older people: I think that hides a fear of death that we have as a society. We are obsessed with youth and denying death.

Despite the staunchest, most venerable defenses, we can never completely subdue death anxiety: it is always there, lurking in some hidden ravine of the mind.

We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.

Once in a while, when I'm alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can't really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don't think I'll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it'll never come to me. It's crazy, but there it is.