Thomas Keneally Quotes

When you're scared, you're still hanging on to life. When you're ready to die, you let it go. A sort of emptying out occurs, a giving up on the world that seems oddly familiar even if you've never done it before.

In Mexico you have death very close. That's true for all human beings because it's a part of life, but in Mexico, death can be found in many things.

I think about death a lot, like I think we all do. I don't think of suicide as an option, but as fun. It's an interesting idea that you can control how you go. It's this thing that's looming, and you can control it.

Society doesn't like to deal with death, but it is a natural part of living.

There's not a higher stake than someone having to face their own death.

I'm not afraid of death at all.

At the same time, I've never been afraid of death or the concept of death.

I don't want to hear about my death.

I just don't get death at all. Yes, it's there. But I don't get it.

I like death. I'm a big fan of it.

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.

How strange this fear of death is! We are never frightened at a sunset.

Someone who is about to die does not mourn the dead.

No doubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at all is, in effect, to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in such a way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's own eventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this psychological trauma, we decide just to try to avoid the topic as much as possible.

Death is an art, you know.

People assume that death hanging over my head would allow me to put things into perspective, but that's not how it works.

The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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

Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven't thought about death.

I don't believe dying's a sad thing.

When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?

To one bent on age, death will come as a release. I feel this quite strongly now that I have grown old myself and have come to regard death like an old debt, at long last to be discharged.

For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.