Darren Aronofsky Quotes

They say the death of a parent puts you in time because that means there's now no generation standing between you and ordinary death: you're next. I don't buy it.

I have been unexpectedly confronted with my own mortality as I was told that I had cancer.

I do think about aging. I have those moments of panic and vanity, but life keeps getting better, so you can't worry about it too much.

I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really did get to a serious point where I couldn't even walk down the street without getting the pain.

Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not.

I'd read things, like people criticizing me. But no one likes to read stuff about that, and probably the main thing that was getting to me was me mum's illness.

Once you have a disease like cancer, you look at life a bit differently. Some things that were important no longer seem as important as they were.

We're so terrified of death in Western culture that we have to make up a myth of an afterlife. I think there's something to be said for living your life very mindful of the fact that you're going to die because I think you carry yourself differently. It doesn't have to be this big, negative bummer.

One reason most people never stop thinking is that mental frenzy keeps us from having to see the upsetting aspects of our lives. If I'm constantly brooding about my children or career, I won't notice that I'm lonely. If I grapple continuously with logistical problems, I can avoid contemplating little issues like, say, my own mortality.

I've always been somebody who's acutely aware of my 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.

As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.

I'm always on the verge of death in my head.

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

I had known a couple of people in college who went off the rails, who had significant bouts with mental illness.

Stress is a killer.

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.

They didn't tell me what type of cancer I had. They didn't tell me what stage I was in. They just told me, 'Mr Gomez, you have cancer.' My life flashed before my eyes. I thought about my kids, I thought about my wife. Nothing prepares you for the shock of someone telling you you have that horrible disease.

I know mortality exists, but I cannot do anything about it. So it does not make me anxious.

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.

Turning 50 gives me more yesterdays than tomorrows.

Even the bold will fly when they see Death drawing in close enough to end their life.

Once in a while, when I'm alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can't really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don't think I'll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it'll never come to me. It's crazy, but there it is.

I am not immortal, but I've got a lot left in me yet.

It's not easy to live every moment wholly aware of death. It's like trying to stare the sun in the face: you can stand only so much of it. Because we cannot live frozen in fear, we generate methods to soften death's terror. We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.