“Imminent death is a fact of life”

“Imminent death didn't terrify her as much as did the prospect of having lived a life in perpetual retreat, a life that would amount now to so much less than she'd ever hoped,...”

“My mother died of colon cancer one week after my eleventh birthday, and that fact has shaped my life. All that I have become and much that I have not become, I trace directly or indirectly to her death. ... In my professional and personal life, I have lived with the awareness of death's imminence for more than half a century, and labored in its constant presence for all but the first decade of that time.”

“If I can't joke about imminent death, then I might as well just resign.”

“The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.”

“Embrace the probability of your imminent death....and know there is nothing i can do to save you.”