Yayoi Kusama Quotes

You've gotta know what death is to know life!

What makes us really human is it's in the presence of death that we start valuing life.

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

It's been fun. I've had a lucky life. Art has made me pull the best out of myself.

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.

You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don't take life for granted any more. I'm really glad to be here.

I've been running from, and toward, death all my life, more aware of it than a person should be.

'Biutiful' is not about death. It's about life. It's a hymn to life.

The more I grow, and the older I get, the more I am enjoying my life and know how precious it really is.

Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. One hundred years from now, your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic.

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.

As I come towards the end of my life, you get to see things in a slightly different perspective.

When one is young, aspiring to play for the country, doing well, any hindrance, like injury or being out of form, can be frustrating and a cause of annoyance or even anger. But once you have a close encounter with death, you realise the real value of life.

Ageing's a difficult thing, moving closer to death, but it's okay. I've had a good time living, so I'm gonna have a good time dying.

I'm not afraid of death. What's to fear? Once you're dead, that's it. Nothing. I don't believe in heaven or hell. That's baloney. What matters is the here and now. Yes, I'm 88, and there are things I can't do: I can't run a race or climb Everest. But isn't life magnificent?

I embrace old age. Look, I'm never going to dunk on LeBron James, and I've learned to accept that. I got a pretty good life, and I'm very fortunate, and I have my blessings.

You realize that however much you don't think about death - or think that's for other people - you're just an organism living from day to day. I'm just grateful I'm here.

It is neccessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.

That was a wonderful period in my life. I mean, I didn't become an artist, but somebody let me do something I loved. What a luxury, to do something you love to do.

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.

I know and value what it means to wake up and be alive and to share my story. I'm so blessed to be here and to be able to talk about it.

I realise how precious life is, probably because I've seen how it can be taken away.

It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.

Have an earnestness for death and you will have life.