Jessica Mitford Quotes

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

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

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 think a lot of us share a fear that we and people we love will lose control of our own destinies at the end of life.

If I learnt anything at all about terminal illness in my research, it's that the experience is different for everyone. I do believe that life becomes concentrated when it's boundaried and that death is the biggest boundary of all.

My doctor gave me six months to live, but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more.

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident.

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.

Both individual fulfillment and the ecological balance of life on this planet are best served by dying when our inherent biology decrees that we do.

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.

My mother did not want cancer to interfere with my life, as she knew it would eventually end hers.

When people are dying, bureaucracy should be thrown out of the water.

There can be no stronger claim to a physician's assistance than at the time when death is imminent, a moral judgment implied by the state's own recognition of the legitimacy of medical procedures necessarily hastening the moment of impending death.

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

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Nineteen percent of doctors say that they'd be able to give their patients a lethal injection. But they also went on to say that the patient would have to be really, really behind on payments.

As a free person, I ought to be allowed if I'm dying to take something.

We don’t have a right to die; we have a duty to die.

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?

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.

When your spouse is given a bleak prognosis, you become an expert in soaking up every moment of every day.

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.