Quotes & Sayings About Things To Do Before You Die

I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it. — John Waters

It was impossible to breathe at this point. This man, this brilliant talented, gorgeous man had just poured out his heart tome, and I was going to die before I could respond because I'd stopped breathing. He continued "At some point, we'll fight. In the future, things might get difficult. I'm never going to be an easy person to get along with. But Vera, on the other hand, we can fight for each other. Life will likely get difficult whether we're together or not, so why not tackle it together? And I might be an asshole, but I'm an asshole that cares a very great deal for you. In fact, I might even love you."

Basically it was impossible to breathe now. I had probably turned purple. "You what?"

His hands moved up my forearms, gripping for support. Whether it was for him or me, I didn't know.

"I love you, Vera. I do. I love you. — Rachel Higginson

I'm still kind of a mess. But I think we all are. No one's got it all together. I don't think you ever do get it totally together. Probably if you did manage to do it you'd spontaneously combust. I think that's a law of nature. If you ever manage to become perfect, you have to die instantly before you ruin things for everyone else. — Michael Thomas Ford

A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, "Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud."
"I have a better idea," suggested Twain. "Why don't you stay right at home in Boston and keep them? — Mark Twain

The reason you keep on coming back to see me is very simple; every time you have seen me your body has learned certain things, even against your desire. And finally your body now needs to come back to me to learn more. Let's say that your body knows that it is going to die, even though you never think about it. So I've been telling your body that I too am going to die and before I do I would like to show our body certain things, things which you cannot give to your body yourself ... So let's say then that your body returns to me because I am its friend — Carlos Castaneda

He had given in to hope, and that will kill you. It kills you before you die. Long before you die. — Rick Yancey

As you sit, make peace also with the reality that, after you die, it won't matter to you how you are remembered; you will not be here to experience it. All the grand things that you do or say, all the skyscrapers you build and cover with gold, your elegant tombstone, all will be completely forgotten eventually. Even your children, and their children, too, will be forgotten. That being so, perhaps it is best to begin to erase your presence well before you leave the scene. — Alice Walker

I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. — Peter S. Beagle

We vegabons are a part of this now, and we have a chance to make things better. Maybe we can make the world a little brighter before we die. At least, that's why I'm here. I've always wanted to make people smile. But for the first time in my life, I'm powerful enough to do more. I can help change things. You empowered us, Kara. Don't give up. The rest of us need you to believe, or we'll lose faith completely. We may have Grimoires too, but there is only one true Vegabond. — S.M. Boyce

Hustle is waking up the day before you die and realising you gave it your all. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Before I die, I want to...be the person I'm meant to be and have that be enough. — Jennifer Niven

To live is nothing more than to come here to die, to be what we were before being born, but with apprenticeship, experience, knowledge of cause, and perhaps with will. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Today the average lifetime is over seventy years, long enough for a great number of accomplishments. But this development has occurred within the present century. Before that, people tended to die much younger than they do today, and among those early deaths were those of many brilliant and talented people who had much to give the world. It is those people to whom I reach out. It is to them I offer the opportunity to return. — Lois Duncan

Make a list of twenty-five things you want to experience before you die. Carry it in your wallet or purse and refer to it often. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Because really, what do you have to lose? Your life? That's no big deal, I promise you. When you find out you might die, you're finally allowed to live like you never have before. If you lose your life while living the shit out of it, then you've done the best you could, and you shouldn't worry about death. When you're dead, you can't screw up. But while you're here, all you have are a few things to call your own. You have your integrity, your family, and your hope for the future. These are important and you should keep them somewhere safe where you'll remember them. — Kevin Lankes

Her whole face twisted in agony and one tear fell from the corner of her eye, and I wanted to die right there. I wanted to die before I had to watch another one slip from her eyes. — Nicole Williams

I THINK PERHAPS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. PEOPLE'S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED "LIVING." WOULD YOU LIKE A PRAWN? — Terry Pratchett

Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die. — William Butler Yeats

Medicine allows people to live who would otherwise die, so antibiotics will let people survive infections that they might be otherwise very vulnerable to and even little things might make a big difference, so I wear eyeglasses because my eyes aren't particularly strong, before there were eyeglasses someone at my age would probably not be good for much. — Carl Zimmer

I promise to pay you before you die - but you have to promise not to die. — Jim Baen

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

Luce: "But what about all those other times, when I die before we kiss, before
"
Bill: "Before you even have a chance to see how toxic your relationship might become? — Lauren Kate

Who sent you?" Sicarius asked.
Amaranthe considered carefully before answering. If he simply meant to scare her into providing information, he could have started with a knife against her throat. No, he had almost broken her neck. He had intended to kill her but stopped mid-motion. Why? And would he continue where he had left off if she answered incorrectly?
"Commander of the Armies Hollowcrest."
Given the previous demonstration of how he could see through lies, the truth seemed a safer choice. Besides, she found herself reluctant to die to protect Hollowcrest's anonymity.
"Why?"
"To kill you."
"That I gathered. Why did he send you? What did you do to anger him?"
"I ... Uhm, what?"
"It was a suicide mission. You must have suspected. — Lindsay Buroker

But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it? — Milan Kundera

That's when it happens. The moment of death is full of heat and sound and pain bigger than anything, a funnel of burning heat splitting me in two, something searing and scorching and tearing, and if screaming were a feeling it would be this.
Then nothing. I know some of you are thinking maybe I deserved it. Maybe I shouldn't have sent that rose to Juliet or dumped my drink on her at the party. Maybe I shouldn't have copied off of Lauren Lornet's quiz. Maybe I shouldn't have said those things to Kent. There are probably some of you who think I deserved it because I was going to let Rob go all the way
because I wasn't going to save myself.
But before you start pointing fingers, is what I did really so bad? So bad I deserved to die? So bad I deserved to die like THAT?
Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?
Is it really so much worse than what YOU do?
Think about it. — Lauren Oliver

I'm trying to avoid, you know, guilt, even though before the child is born, you're already thinking you're doing things wrong ... Why do I think that will probably carry over until the day you die? — Emily Mortimer

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. "Corrie," he began gently, "when you and I go to Amsterdam-when do I give you your ticket?"
I sniffed a few times, considering this.
"Why, just before we get on the train."
"Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows when we're going to need things, too. Don't run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us will have to die, you will look into your heart and find the strength you need-just in time. — Corrie Ten Boom

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.
In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones.
Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
I just wanted to make that clear before I begun. — Darren Shan

I saw that show, 50 Things To Do Before You Die. I would have thought the obvious one was 'Shout For Help'. — Jimmy Carr

Life has been reduced to a series of long periods of boredom in the office punctuated by high-octane "experiences" which you can rack up on your list of things to do before you die. That's not really living: that is slavery with the occasional circus thrown in. — Tom Hodgkinson

When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago
and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail
it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are completely dead. They die long before you do. It's astonishing to consider all the things from your past that used to happen all the time but (a) never happen anymore, and (b) never even cross your mind. It's almost like those things didn't happen. Or maybe it seems like they just happened to someone else. To someone you don't really know. To someone you just hung out with for one night, and now you can't even remember her name. — Chuck Klosterman

So what can I do now?" she spoke up a minute later.
"Nothing," I said. "Just think about what comes before words. You owe that to the dead. As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that too much to ask?"
"A little," she said, trying to smile.
"Well, of course it is," I said, trying to smile too.
"I doubt that this makes sense to most people. But I think I'm right. People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if posible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it."
Yuki leaned against the car door. "But that's real hard, isn't it?" she said.
"Real hard," I said. "But it's worth trying for. — Haruki Murakami

If David Brent is the best thing that I ever come up with, then so be it. What are you supposed to do, time the best thing you do for just before you die? — Ricky Gervais

The most important thing to do before you die is live. — Simon Sinek

I've never understood the 'things to do before you die' idea. If I was ill, I'd be in no mood to have a swim with a dolphin. — Karl Pilkington

Sera calls up Drew to tell him about this girl she has just met and is really into and how she doesn't want to rush into things, and Drew tells her to go for it, to not waste time, that she or the girl in question could die tomorrow, that "life can be taken faster than the flick of a switch," and Sera gets upset and tells Drew to quit the "death talk," and Drew says, "After seeing friends of mine in boxes, as motionless as caged flesh in a meat cooler, I just can't do that," and Sera says "God, I can't tell you anything, can I?" before hanging up, and Drew, ignoring this sudden silence, starts thinking about the clay morticians use to mask the truth about dead things. — Brian Alan Ellis

Bouquet list. You've heard of the Jack Nicholson movie, right? The Bucket List? Two old guys who make a list of everything they want to do before they die. Well, when I was starting to recover, I wrote a list of the things I want to do now that I know I'm not going to die - my bouquet list. — Barbara DeLeo

I wanted love and goodness in this which is living death,' I said. 'It was impossible from the beginning, because you cannot have love and goodness when you do what you know to be evil, what you know to be wrong. You can only have the desperate confusion and longing and the chasing of phantom goodness in its human form. I knew the real answer to my quest before I ever reached Paris. I knew it when I first took a human life to feed my craving. It was my death. And yet I would not accept it, could not accept it, because like all creatures I don't wish to die! And so I sought for other vampires, for God, for the devil, for a hundred things under a hundred names. And it was all the same, all evil. And all wrong. Because no one could in any guise convince me of what I myself knew to be ture, that I was damned in my own mind and soul. — Anne Rice

Let me put it this way: You cannot live in the world without being in pain, spiritual and physical pain. We have developed mechanisms to deal with these pains, to overcome them somehow. Therapy, religion and spirituality, relationships, material success. All this can work, but also become a problem itself.
The pursuit of happiness has even been put into the American constitution a couple centuries ago. Today we're so rich, we own much more than we need, we have liberties unknown before, even though they are endangered in the current political climate in the US - and we forget how wonderful it nevertheless is, compared to most other political and economic systems. We have a saying that goes: Give a man enough rope and he hangs himself. — David Foster Wallace

Archaeologists have not yet discovered any stage of human existence without art. Even in the half-light before the dawn of humanity we received this gift from Hands we did not manage to discern. Nor have we managed to ask: Why was this gift given to us and what are we to do with it? And all those prophets who are predicting that art is disintegrating, that it has used up all its forms, that it is dying, are mistaken. We are the ones who shall die. And art will remain. The question is whether before we perish we shall understand all its aspects and all its ends. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Wait: His boyfriend? He was gay? The focus on the lens sharpened, and I could see it clearly now. Of course he was gay. Everyone could see that, except the chubby little lonely heart sitting at seven o'clock, drawing sparkly rainbows on the page with her glitter crayons. I was still beating myself up when the round robin arrived to me, and I sputtered along trying to assemble some phony epiphany with strong verbs, but tears dripped down my face.
The room fell into silence as people waited for me to explain. But what could I possibly say? That I had just discovered my future husband was gay? That I was going to live the rest of my life surrounded by nothing but empty lasagna pans and an overloved cat destined to die before me?
"I'm sorry," I finally said. "I was just reminded of something very painful." And I guess that wasn't a lie. — Sarah Hepola

If I get even five per cent of my ideas out and documented before I die, I'll be lucky. I'm not in danger of running out of riffs or ideas anytime soon. They overwhelm me and it's hard to find time to deal with them. — Jello Biafra

These questions are punctuated by other questions, as diverse as "Will I ever do time?" and "Did this girl have a trusting heart?" The smell of meat and blood clouds up the condo until I don't notice it anymore. And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer - all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible times. Maggots already writhe across the human sausage, the drool pouring from my lips dribbles over them, and still I can't tell if I'm cooking any of this correctly, because I'm crying too hard and I have never really cooked anything before. — Bret Easton Ellis

If you come, you better come in force because I will kill every single one of you. My hand won't shake, my aim won't falter. My face will be the last thing you'll see before you die. I jammed my knife into the table and walked out. — Ilona Andrews

Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it. — Alice Hoffman

Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. So the belief that remembering is an ethical act is deep in our natures as humans, who know we are going to die, and who mourn those who in the normal course of things die before us - grandparents, parents, teachers, and older friends. Heartlessness and amnesia seem to go together. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering (of ancient grievances: Serbs, Irish) embitters. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another. * * * P — Susan Sontag

The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade
Pants for the refuge of some rural shade,
Where all his long anxieties forgot
Amid the charms of a sequester'd spot,
Or recollected only to gild o'er
And add a smile to what was sweet before,
He may possess the joys he thinks he sees,
Lay his old age upon the lap of ease,
Improve the remnant of his wasted span.
And having lived a trifler, die a man. — William Cowper

Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Ben wrapped his fingers tightly around mine, brown eyes fierce, his thoughts a maelstrom of anger and worry. He was only thinking of me. Of getting me away. Keep me safe.
Ben was ready to die for me.
Chance halted before a battered case halfway down the wall. He began pulling on books, muttering to himself as he shoved each one aside.
They won't get you, Ben promised abruptly. I felt his determination flowing through the bond, mixed with love and desperation. He really would give his life to protect mine. — Kathy Reichs

Something in my patience snaps.. 'I'd really rather die than eat your food food and hear you call me 'love'... He holds my gaze for a few infinitely long seconds before he pulls a gun out of jis jacket pocket, He fires. — Tahereh Mafi

We're all alive the day before we die. — Julia Glass

Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Before I die, I want to make sure I have lived. — Mary Papas

It's only sixteen ninety-five," I say with a flutter of my lashes.
"You're serious."
I prop my hands on my waist and stick out a hip, striking a pose worthy of a supermodel. "Look at me. Don't I look serious?"
She collapses into the chair outside the dressing room in a fit of giggles so cute they make my insides fizz. "No! You must be stopped," she says.
"Why?" I strut down an aisle of yellowed lingerie, swiveling my hips, batting bras with flicks of my fingers. "I will be the king of the disco. I will be - " I spin and strike another pose. "An inspiration."
She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. "The real Dylan would die before he'd be seen in public in something like that."
"The real Dylan is boring." I brace my hands on the arms of her chair and lean down until our faces are a whisper apart. "And he's not one fourth the kisser I am."
"Is that right?" Her lips quirk.
"You know it is."
Her smile melts, and her breath comes faster. "Yeah. I do. — Stacey Jay

The only place we have to come before we die is the place of seeing God. — Ann Voskamp

Sure, they only had ten days to stop the giants from waking Gaia. Sure, he could die before dinnertime. But he loved being told that something was impossible. It was like someone handing him a lemon meringue pie and telling him not to throw it. He just couldn't resist the challenge. — Rick Riordan

Where do you go when you die? The same place you were before you were born; nowhere! It's over! — Billy Connolly

Everything is dangerous. Even in your dreams. Even if you sleep without dreams. From the moment you jump out of bed and take that first breath. Something terrible might happen. Someone's bound to die before the story is over. You might even fall in love.
-The Man On The Ceiling — Steve Rasnic Tem

It is not understood that before life an individual decides to
live. A self is not simply the accidental personification of the
body's biological mechanism. Each person born desires to be born.
He dies when that desire no longer operates. No epidemic or illness
or natural disaster - or stray bullet from a murderer's gun - will
kill a person who does not want to die. — Seth

Suddenly, she doesn't want to die. She has no real reason not to, no sudden revelation, except that it's equally pointless to die as not to die. Why doesn't she die? She lives because she's meant to live, because she's already alive and it's comparatively easy to stay that way. She lives because, even though she doesn't know what it is, there must be a reason why she's here in the first place. She lives because either she's not as brave as all the dead girls who've gone before her, or she's actually braver - it's hard to tell. — A.M. Homes

God, she'd never even been able to imagine this much cold before.
How could people live someplace that so obviously didn't want them? All that romance about snow and seasons ... You shouldn't have to make a special effort not to die every time you left your house. — Rainbow Rowell

We base our ideas about the world on our personal experience, and that experience has ingrained the rate of growth of the recent past in our heads as "the way things happen." We're also limited by our imagination, which takes our experience and uses it to conjure future predictions - but often, what we know simply doesn't give us the tools to think accurately about the future. When we hear a prediction about the future that contradicts our experience-based notion of how things work, our instinct is that the prediction must be naive. If I tell you [...] that you may live to be 150, or 250, or not die at all, your instinct will be, "That's stupid - if there's one thing I know from history, it's that everybody dies." And yes, no one in the past has not died. But no one flew airplanes before airplanes were invented either. — Tim Urban

Carson McClain, you scare me like nothing has ever scared me before. You drive me crazy and make me laugh and push my buttons on purpose. You make me feel safe and smart and pretty. Sometimes I think I might actually melt when you wrap your arms around me, and right now I feel a little bit like I might die if you don't kiss me. — Cora Carmack

I don't believe in men waiting until they are ready to die before using any of their money for helpful purposes. — George Eastman

The plain shiprock walls, and the painted statue of Lord Pas (from which the paint was peeling) will remain with me until the day I die, always somewhat colored by the wonder I felt as a small boy at seeing a black cock struggling in the old man's hands after he had cut its throat, its wings beating frantically, beating as if they might live after all, live somehow somewhere, if only they could spray the whole place with blood before they — Gene Wolfe

Cas' eyes met mine over the crossbow, a forest on fire under furrowed brows. "This is your fault."
Well, thanks for the reminder, right before I'm about to die. — Isabelle Crusoe

Is there anything you want to do before we put our heads in plastic boxes for two days?'
I thought about this for a second, then held the side of her face and kissed her.
We both zipped up our suits just in time to see the reactor blow: a column of green radioactive fire, belching black smoke. Di squeezed my hand, our big boxy heads knocked clumsily together, and I tried to think of something romantic to say.
'Well, I guess that's why they all die of cancer. — Tom Francis

Death is like giving birth. Birth can be painful. Sometimes women die from giving birth. However, when the baby is born, all that pain (that was endured) vanishes in an instant. Love for that tiny baby makes one forget the pain, the fear. And as I've said before, love between mother and child is the highest experience, the closest to divine love.
You might wonder about the parallel I'm making between birth and death. But I say to you, the fear and pain accompanying an awful death is over quickly. Beyond that portal one is suddenly in the light, in oneness and bliss ... Just as a woman heals rapidly after childbirth and then is able to fall in love with her baby, those who pass over also are able to fall in love with a new life."-Kuan Yin (From "Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin — Hope Bradford

The ships tried to block their exit for several heartbeats before they realized just how suicidal Caillen really was. He'd slam into them before he'd yield. In a game of header, he refused to blink or swerve. Fuck them. If he was going to die, so were they. Just as he would have hit them, they veered off sharply, out of the way. Laughing — Sherrilyn Kenyon

How many flutterings before they rest quietly in their graves! They that soared so loftily, how contentedly they return to dust again, and are laid low, resigned to lie and decay at the foot of the tree, and afford nourishment to new generations of their kind, as well as to flutter on high! They teach us how to die. One wonders if the time will ever come when men, with their boasted faith in immortality, will lie down as gracefully and as ripe,
with such an Indian-summer serenity will shed their bodies, as they do their hair and nails. — Henry David Thoreau