Mark Strand Quotes

I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted - and then, yes, then we don’t think about it anymore until we are about to leave the world again.

Everybody's human. You are only on this planet for a little bit of time.

It is very easy to take for granted the phenomenon that we are each alive, but we must try not to.

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.

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

A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

When you realize how short life is, you ought to celebrate life even more.

It's wonderful to know you're aging, because that means you're still on the planet, right?

When you understand that you will die to-morrow, if not to-day, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant!... So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work - anything so as not think of death

We are occupants. No one has any lasting purchase on life or on the planet.

I don't wonder about anything. I'm too old to wonder. I think the most important thing is to wake-up with a pulse. I look in the obituary columns. If I'm not in it, I get out of bed.

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

As I get older... I start to realize that life ain't half bad. Each year, I'm amazed that I'm still alive. I don't take any of this for granted, I'm a lucky dude.

I think the key is to realize that life is temporary and spending life questioning life is a waste of time.

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

How short life is for fools.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.

Life was precious. Life was fragile. Here one moment, gone the next. Every second should be milked for all it's worth because you never know when the bottom was going to drop out.

You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously

Let life be short, else shame will be too long.

I always think everything is going to be my last job so every single day is a gift. This whole life is an accident for me.

Life is short and we have scarcely begun to live when we are called to die.

The greatest surprise in life to me is the brevity of life.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.