Don Rickles Quotes

It doesn't take that many years for a kid to realise that they're going to die. It's always there in the back of their mind the rest of their lives.

You're immortal, aren't you, until you get a little peek over the precipice. The thought of death...You're not supposed to start pondering it until you're old. And there's nothing like being told you've got a life-threatening disease to concentrate your mind on that.

When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

I've spent a lot of words on my own mortality.

I don't think kids have a problem with death. It's us older ones who are nearer to it, that start being frightened.

It's a weird feeling when you know you're going to die.

I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time.

As one gets older, this question of death, becomes more vexing and urgent.

I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.

I felt myself getting whiter... What does it mean to become white? How does it feel to see Death in the flesh, come to gather you in?

I think people believe in heaven because they don't like the idea of dying, because they want to carry on living and they don't like the idea that other people will move into their house and put their things into the rubbish.

I know that whenever I think about death, I come up against a stone wall.

I would like to grow less afraid of dying. I am infinitely less afraid today than I was 15 or 25 years ago. I was most afraid of dying when I was 33, because I come from a Catholic family.

We're the only species that can look into the future and know that we're going to die one day, and it causes all sorts of cognitive stress on your system.

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

As a culture, we are not comfortable with mortality. We do not accept it the way other cultures do. We cling to youth, and we don't want to die. It's like, 'Well, too bad, we do.'

I've always been terrified of dying, always. It was a concern of mine long before it had to be.

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.

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.

Since I was a child, death is definitely something that I think about every day. But I think that everybody does. You try and avoid it, but it's such a big thing that you can't.

I was fascinated by mortality. Most people are, even if they don't admit it.

We keep making the same mistakes as a species, and you can usually draw it back to the fact that we are all terrified of dying. We also all think that we are going to escape it until we get to 65!

You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.

I don't have a fear of aging or a fear of death.