“What else is death but the refusal any longer to grow and suffer change?”

“O gods, \ If any gods will listen, I deserve \ Punishment surely, I do not refuse it, \ But lest, in living, I offend the living, Offend the dead in death, drive me away \ From either realm, change me somehow, refuse me \ Both life and death! -- Myrrha, before being transformed into a tree”

“I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!”

“Death was a release, in so many ways. An end to suffering. An escape to something else. What that something else was, I didn’t know. Maybe heaven. Maybe hell. Maybe nothing at all. But I doubted it could be any worse than some of the things I’d seen and done in my lifetime.”

“Nobody cries because of a person's death; death for them is a change of clothes, nothing else.”

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”