Phyllis Bottome Quotes

Anna Deavere Smith's new one-woman show bills itself as being about health care, but the truth is that 'Let Me Down Easy' is mostly about the grimmer subject of death and dying.

This has been harder for my friends. I know I'm going to die.

Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying.

My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He was a fighter. By the time he was ready to die he wasn't able to die in the way that he wanted to, which seemed an outrage to me.

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn't know when. But now I knew it acutely.

It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

Why do dying people never shed tears?

When you know you are dying, self-deceptions fly from your bedside like embers off a bonfire.

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

Death is a fact of life, no matter where you live. Taking care of the dying is a necessity everywhere. Those are not conditions exclusive to small towns.

Gracious dying is a huge, macabre and expensive joke on the American public.

It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

You can't tell a 6-year-old your sister is going to die.

It is the duty of the doctor to prolong life. It is not his duty to prolong dying.

I've been there for a couple of people when they were dying; it didn't look like fun. But if I was gonna do it, I'd want someone like me around. And I will be there!

I would like to avoid dying if possible. I do like living! The worst, I think for me, though, would be a really bedridden death.

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing... You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

My husband Don's mother, Denise, was diagnosed with cancer, and she was given eight months to live. We decided to go and stay there and help live her days with her, 'cause you don't get those chances again, right?

I don't want to die in pain or in an undignified way, I don't want any of the people I love to die in, die painfully. But I'm aware of the fact that they may die before I do and I have to part with them and take the loss. The hardest thing of love is to let go. But I think I can get let go of almost anybody.

We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.

Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’s like to be dying, and (b) not have died.

I know what it's like to see one's mother go through the agony of death and be unable to help; there is no consolation. We all have to bear such heavy burdens, for they are unalterably linked to life.