Guillermo del Toro Quotes

Many, if not most, Americans can imagine a fate worse than death, and it is a seemingly interminable process of dying. For them, it is frightening that politicians can find ways to interject themselves into this sad process.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

I think a lot of us share a fear that we and people we love will lose control of our own destinies at the end of life.

Each man is master of his own death, and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.

It's not morbid to talk about death. Most people don't worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He was a fighter. By the time he was ready to die he wasn't able to die in the way that he wanted to, which seemed an outrage to me.

Americans of all ages deserve quality end-of-life medical care.

I think I definitely got scared by the second or third time a doctor told me I was dying.

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

Wait for them to die

We could keep his body going, but it was trying its hardest to die.

I don't want to die in pain or in an undignified way, I don't want any of the people I love to die in, die painfully. But I'm aware of the fact that they may die before I do and I have to part with them and take the loss. The hardest thing of love is to let go. But I think I can get let go of almost anybody.

You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.

I would urge the government to allocate more funds toward fighting cancer. My own situation, it made me think. It made me think about the potential of dying. I wouldn't say I was scared. I'm more scared of how it will happen than of it happening. I'm not scared that I'm going to die. I think of how I'm going to die ... I don't want to linger. That scares me a little. The idea of lingering.

"I'm going over the valley." (Dying from throat cancer, his doctor found him wandering around his room, asked him where was he going?)

Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate enough to die swiftly and suddenly, in full possession of our faculties and our fate, but more and more of us will be condemned to linger, at the mercy of anxious or indifferent relatives, careless strangers, unwanted medical interventions, increasing debility, incontinence, memory loss. We live too long, but, like the sibyl hanging in her basket in the cave at Cumae, we find it hard to die.

I have no fear of death whatsoever. I suspect that few people do, what they all fear is what might happen in the years or months before death.

My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help.

Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying.

You can actually be bored stiff while you're dying.

When people are dying, bureaucracy should be thrown out of the water.

Cancer victims who don't accept their fate, who don't learn to live with it, will only destroy what little time they have left.