All the body wants to do biologically is decompose. Once you die, it's, 'Let me out here! I'm ready to shoot my atoms back into the universe!'

The home funeral - caring for the dead ourselves - changes our relationship to grieving. If you have been married to someone for 50 years, why would you let someone take them away the moment they die?

Going around not fully believing that you're going to die is really problematic because it affects how you think about the future of the planet, about the future of your own life, about the decisions you're making.

Ever since childhood, when I found out that the ultimate fate for all humans was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity had been fighting for supremacy in my mind.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference', you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

My mother, who is nearly ninety now, still talks continually about my father. All my life, I've been aware of her grief about his absence and her strong pride in his conduct.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.