Dying Wishes Quotes

I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.

Doctor told me I've got two weeks to live. I said: "Can I have the last week in July and the 1st week in August?"

For better or for worse, I've watched people die in front of me. I see how they are in the end. And they're not cynical. In the end, they wanna hold somebody's hand. And that's real to me.

I'm trying to surround myself during my life with the eight people I'd surround my bed with on my death.

I wish I could go back and rewrite my first book, You Bright and Risen Angels; I could do a better job. But in the meantime, nobody knows as much about my books as I do. Nobody has the right but me to say which words go into my books or get deleted or edited. When I'm dying, I'll smile, knowing I stood up for my books. If I die with more money, that wouldn't bring a smile to my face. Unless I got better drugs or more delicious-looking nurses.

I have met people that said when their friend was dying, they made them promise that their funeral would be a party without people sitting in silence and in sadness. They want to celebrate their life and the life they lived and I try to adhere to that more.

Get your priorities straight. No one ever said on his death bed, 'Gee, if I'd only spent more time at the office.'

I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.

I don't want to spend my last few whatever it is, months or years on this earth, giving speeches.

I am just going. Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the Vault in less than three days after I am dead.... Tis well.

If I had five minutes to live, I don't think I'd be bothered singing a song. I'd be dead, so it won't really matter. I'd have a glass of wine and a cigarette.

No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business.

Like our shadows, our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

I think we could jam a bit more in our coffins than we do. I'm going to have some books, some I haven't finished or haven't read, some feathers and nice bits and pieces, the odd note. Just on the journey for the next bit.

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.

Make a living will. Talk about it. Death is going to happen to everybody. Write it down. Even if you write it on a piece of paper at home and have your family witness it, you need to write it down.

If I die unexpectedly can everyone just do the right thing and pretend I was a way better person than I am?