Clive James Quotes

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

You want to live-but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying-and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead?

In order to die, you must first have lived.

Through the years our business has been killing;-it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of lif eis limited to death.

Breathing is the first act of life, and the last.

Every man must die, Jon Snow. But first he must live.

The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death.

I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.

At the solemn moment of death, every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life.

For a person who is dying only eternity counts.

It isn't true that you live only once. You only die once. You live lots of times, if you know how.

I'm gonna live till I die.

But when it really happens I'm very fascinated, I'm waiting for the moment, because the moment where life abandons you and death steps in, that moment must be fantastic, no?

If we don't know life, how can we know death?

Each instant of life is a step toward death.

I think that nothing teaches you more about life than death and dying.

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

You've gotta know what death is to know life!

Death is a companion for all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we're aware of it or not, and it's not necessarily a terrible thing.

When you really deep down look at it, we go to bed every night, get up every morning, stay here for 70 or 80 years, and then we die.

You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

Death isn't a funny thing. We're all lucky to be living.

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.