Jerzy Kosinski Quotes

I'm not fixated on death but I know tomorrows are not guaranteed.

No one can control the aging process or the trajectory of illness.

When you've been in life-threatening situations, you become aware that life is not for ever.

Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

You're never promised your next breath.

No one is so old that he cannot live yet another year, nor so young that he cannot die today.

I'm kind of a morbid person. I'm very optimistic, but I also feel like I'm going to die at any moment. I feel very much aware of my mortality. I'm here, and then I'm not.

We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death -- or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again -- may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.

All diseases run into one, old age.

In the sixties, you're still thinking you could do something about this slow disintegration of the body.

I always know I can die at any moment.

When you are young and healthy, it never occurs to you that in a single second your whole life could change.

Mortality defines the human condition.

I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.

Things are old. Parts are old. I'm talking about 'us' parts. AARP-parts. Some of us were born with stronger parts than others.

I honestly feel it could all end tomorrow. Not just the band thing - I mean life.

When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.'

I think I've become more aware of aging in the last couple of years because of friends dying of cancer or friends' parents dying and myself - I'm still healthy, but I'm aging, and that's something that I think about more, even though I shouldn't be too concerned.

Until having kids, I had never really thought about mortality so much.

You yourself don't have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality.

It's awful to have to, but I've started thinking about that, you know. 86. I'm thinking, well, maybe I might make it to 90. At least I'd like to have my brains.

I don't take things for granted, because everything feels more fragile. It's made me wonder about mortality and how long you've got somebody in the world. I'm more fearful than I used to be.

I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my mortality.

I always thought I was going to die before I was 60.