Your death gave you a warning. It always comes with a chill. (Ixtlan, 53)

The thing to do when you are impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion was there watching you.

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong, that nothing really matters outside his touch. Your death will tell you, “I haven’t touched you yet.” (Ixtlan, 55)

One of us here has to change, and fast. One of us here has to learn again that death is the hunter, and that it is always to one’s left. One of us here has to ask death for advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them. (Ixtlan, 56)

Nothing in the world could possibly have any significance except to each one of us personally. (Ring, 189)

The only deterrent to our despair was the awareness of our death, the key to the sorcerer’s key to things. His idea was that the awareness of our death was the only thing that could give us the strength to withstand the duress and the pain of our lives and our fears of the unknown. (Ring, 234)

Volition