I hope when I'm on my deathbed, people forgive me, because there is a lot to forgive.

I'm great at a deathbed. I've never given tranquillisers or psychiatric medicine. I've given love and fun and creativity and passion and hope, and these things ease suffering.

When we die our money, fame, and honors will be meaningless. We own nothing in this world. Everything we think we own is in reality only being loaned to us until we die. And on our deathbed at the moment of death, no one but God can save our souls.

No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer'.

No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business.

Play your Life back from your imaginary deathbed. Think of a situation in the future when you know you are dying?and ask yourself what will you have still wanted to do if you had more time. Go do that thing right now. Do not postpone your Happiness! There is no tomorrow. You don't get a second shot at living Life. This is it!

If I have learned something from my life, as well excessive reading is that we all are Sisyphus. And we all realize it, eventually. Some in their thirties, some in their sixties, and some when they are on their deathbeds. And once we realize who we really are, we all ask ourselves one simple question?'What the hell was that? What the hell was all that?

The Chicago historian Studs Terkel asked Bob Dylan in the sixties about how he went about writing a song and trying to outdo himself, or at least being as good as the last song he wrote, and his response was pretty damn perfect. "I'm content with the same old piece of wood," he said. "I just want to find another place to pound a nail?.?.?. Music, my writing, is something special, not sacred." If the songs Bob Dylan wrote aren't sacred, then nobody's songs are sacred. Nobody's. No one has ever laid on their deathbed thinking, "Thank God I didn't make that song. Thank God I didn't make that piece of art. Thank God I avoided the embarrassment of putting a bad poem into the world." Nobody reaches the end of their life and regrets even a single moment of creating something, no matter how shitty or unappreciated that something might have been. I'm writing this just weeks after returning from Belleville, where I sat next to my dad's bed in my childhood house and watched him die. I can guarantee you that in the final moments of his life, he wasn't kicking himself for all those times when he dared to make a fool of himself by singing too loud.

When you're on your deathbed you probably aren't counting the movies you've made.

Individuals approaching death often experience encounters with their dead relatives who seem to welcome them to the next world. These deathbed visions are authentic and convincing they are often followed by a state of euphoria and seem to ease the transition.

The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious compassionate loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.

No one ever said on their deathbed 'Gee I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer'.