Amy Hempel Quotes

some men never die and some men never live but we're all alive tonight.

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

There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead.

You are only here now; you're only alive in this moment.

I think about life and death a lot. For the longest time I thought this was it, but then I thought maybe reincarnation does exist and we will all come back. My new thought is either of these could be true, but realistically what is going to happen is when you are dead you are not going to know you are dead, so it's not the end of the world.

Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.

If everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is gonna die...where does the sacred part come in?

Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.

Today is the only time we can possibly live.

Death is the end of the fear of death. [...] To avoid it we must not stop fearing it and so life is fear. Death is time because time allows us to move toward death which we fear at all times when alive. We move around and that is fear. Movement through space requires time. Without death there is no movement through space and no life and no fear. To be aware of death is to be alive is to fear is to move around in space and time toward death.

I think the life we are living now is just a blink in the eye of eternity.

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

However and wherever we are, we must live as if we will never die.

Death is a false fear. When it is here, you won't be. When it's not, you are here.

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

You never know how much time you have left.

If you haven't understood that if you are born you die, you scarcely deserve to be able to be alive.

Death showed up in my life very early on, so I'm aware of it. If you look at most of the things I write there's a sort of contemplation of mortality - although 'True Blood' doesn't fall into that. Even though there's such a ridiculously high body count!

You're either living or you're dead.

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

I don’t think of dying, I think of being here now.

Some people live. Some people die.

One day all of us will die but - and this is the important thing - we are not dead yet.

Today's today. Tomorrow we may be ourselves gone down the drain of Eternity.

How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?