Each instant of life is a step toward death.

Your body must become familiar with its death - in all its possible forms and degrees - as a self-evident imminent and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

Death is with you all the time you get deeper in it as you move towards it but it's not unfamiliar to you. It's always been there so what becomes unfamiliar to you when you pass away from the moment is really life.

Everything one does in life even love occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.

The day of my birth my death began its walk. It is walking toward me without hurrying.

I am able to follow my own death step by step. Now I move softly towards the end.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death the body maintains its irreparable lead.

Even at our birth death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.

Since the day of my birth my death began its walk. It is walking toward me without hurrying.