I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

Write as if you were dying.

I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.

breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.

I'm delirious because I'm dying so fast.

Life doesn’t stop. And every single second, we’re getting closer to death.

Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.

Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about they neck, are flying over our heads light like clouds of a windy day, never to return more — every thing presses on — whilst thou art twisting that lock, — see! it grows grey; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make. — — Heaven have mercy on us both!

Each time we don't say what we wanna say, we're dying.

my kids joke that I'm going to die with a pencil in my hand

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.

The truth is that I can’t put down my pen: I think I’m going to have the Nausea and I feel as though I’m delaying it while writing. So I write whatever comes into my mind.

Time wastes too fast : every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more — every thing presses on — whilst thou are twisting that lock, — see! it grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!