Life is better than death

Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody. - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1945
While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die. -Leonardo Da Vinci
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it. - Alice Walker
I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. - Willa Cather