Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Quotes

Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be.

Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!

In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it.

Ever since childhood, when I found out that the ultimate fate for all humans was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity had been fighting for supremacy in my mind.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Death is a false fear. When it is here, you won't be. When it's not, you are here.

I am afraid of death, scared by it. I already don't know whether I exist or not. So dying really terrifies me.

Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

There's a gap between people knowing what I do and really believing that I still do that - and wondering what it is I really do.

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

I'm trying to protect what I advertise. That's my stance on any kind of self-expression.

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.

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.

To this day, I have people I might meet who will make assumptions about my life based on fictional elements of 'The Squid And The Whale.' But I think that's par for the course if you make something that feels kind of real.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

There are times when I don't take roles because I don't want to be perceived a certain way.

He who doesn't fear death dies only once.

Once a child is confronted with the concept of death there's a certain innocence that goes.

I would hate the thought of dying full stop; I've got to be honest with you.

Death is the easiest of all things after it, and the hardest of all things before it.

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

We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.

I think we should look forward to death more than we do. Of course everybody hates to go to bed or miss anything, but dying is really the only chance we'll get to rest.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don't know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.