If we really attend to death, listen to it, and talk about it, instead of trying as hard as possible to pretend it doesn’t exist, it can teach us three lessons—not how to die but how to live a worthy and fulfilling life.

And when you are dying, you may have a chance to reflect on your life and the legacy you are leaving behind. You created that legacy during the past day. You are creating that legacy at this very moment. What will you leave behind? What will you create that will outlive you? How many hearts and minds will be touched by your deeds? Use your precious

I believed the afterlife was, as an atheist might tell a child curious about heaven, the memories of other people. How my mother would have hated that! To cede control to other people’s brains, when her own brain was what she trusted. Still, she loved being thought about.

Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

we’ll be lying down in the earth for about fifteen million years, and we have a short exposure. I feel that when you recognize that death is on its way, it is a great liberation, because it means that you can in some way feel the call to live everything that is within you.