Peter Hedges Quotes

I have no fear nor shrinking; I have seen death so often that it is not strange or fearful to me.

I always say that death can be one of the greatest experiences ever. If you live each day of your life right, then you have nothing to fear.

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.

Besides, wouldn't it be wonderful if no one ever had to worry about the random cruelty of fatal illness or the woes of old age attacking them or their loved ones?

I hope I'm worthy in my dying. I hope I can maintain myself - that I wouldn't become pathetic and needy, and the worst part of myself come out in adversity. But I'm not afraid of it. It'd be such a silly thing to do! To ruin the life you have by fearing its ending.

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.

There's never been a doctor who served many patients who, despite their best efforts, did not lose some of them to death. But they understood that was part of life itself.

I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to hold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the two.

Wait for them to die

I’m always feeling death, and that is a part of life. When you know a lot of people, you will always experience death.

Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?- How else? Though not till I'm done reading.

Don't let anyone tell you that age purchases your freedom from fear of death.

People don't die of old age, they die of neglect.

I have no fear of death whatsoever. I suspect that few people do, what they all fear is what might happen in the years or months before death.

Heads in the Women's Ward On pillow after pillow lies The wild white hair and staring eyes; Jaws stand open; necks are stretched With every tendon sharply sketched; A bearded mouth talks silently To someone no one else can see. Sixty years ago they smiled At lover, husband, first-born child. Smiles are for youth. For old age come Death's terror and delirium.

I don't think that anyone can age in a conscious way and not experience grief.

There is nothing that Nature has made necessary which is more easy than death; we are longer a-coming into the world than going out of it; and there is not any minute of our lives wherein we may not reasonably expect it. Nay, it is but a momen'ts work, the parting of soul and body. What a shame is it then to stand in fear of anything so long that is over so soon!

Florida was a living tomb, she used to tell anyone who'd listen, an old-age home in the shape of a state, God's little waiting room, as she was fond of quoting.

Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate enough to die swiftly and suddenly, in full possession of our faculties and our fate, but more and more of us will be condemned to linger, at the mercy of anxious or indifferent relatives, careless strangers, unwanted medical interventions, increasing debility, incontinence, memory loss. We live too long, but, like the sibyl hanging in her basket in the cave at Cumae, we find it hard to die.

I don't fear death, it must be like a long sleep.

Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it?

But death doesn't scare me. To know exactly when I might expect it, up close and in my face, would actually be a comfort. Because to tell the truth, most of the time dying seems pretty much like my only means of escape.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.

Never fear being a petty fool it means you ain't dying