For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I’m there for all of them.
Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it’s over, you feel like you don’t have any bones left to hold you up.
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
Death is the great equalizer of human beings. Death is the boundary that we need to measure the precious texture of our lives. All people owe a death. There is no use vexing about inevitable degeneration and death because far greater people than me succumbed to death’s endless sleep without living as many years as me.
There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply–and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.
We will die here and trust the meaning of our lives to the next generation.. That is the sole way we can rebel against this cruel world !
One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I woke, it was to the sound of my own weeping. For I had hoped to open my eyes on Heaven, where my father was; and they had only pulled me back to Hell.
We’re standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you’re asking me to marry you?Perfect timing.
Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.
Again the ranch is on the market and they’ve shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, ‘Give them to the real estate shark, I’m out a here,” dropping the keys in Ennis’s hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.
I kept thinking how they were all names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing dead people keep.
Man, he said, I’m not afraid of graveyards. The dead are just, you know, people who wanted the same things you and I want.What do we want? I asked blurrily.Aw, man, you know, he said. We just want, well, the same things these people wanted.What was that?He shrugged. To live, I guess, he said.
Like distant music these words that he had written years before were borne towards him from the past.
WIDOW. The word consumes itself, said Sylvia Plath, who consumed herself.
Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.
The SkeletonChattering finch and water-flyAre not merrier than I;Here among the flowers I lieLaughing everlastingly.No: I may not tell the best;Surely, friends, I might have guessedDeath was but the good King’s jest,It was hid so carefully.
If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.
..And because he was still able to move his hands – Morrie always spoke with both hands waving – he showed great passion when explaining how you face the end of life.
People love to be listened to and represented, and they love it when they feel like you have some of the same problems that they do. Everybody deals with things like romantic difficulties in relationships and death and cancer and abuse.
The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture – it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead
In time, in time they tell me, I’ll not feel so bad. I don’t want time to heal me. There’s a reason I’m like this.I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won’t smooth you away.I can’t say goodbye.
Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.
Do not use life to give life to death. Do not use death to bring death to life.
Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI’ll make you little jackets;I’ll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There’ll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the penniesTo save in his bank;Anne shall have the keysTo make a pretty noise with.Life must go on,Though good men die;Anne, eat your breakfast;Dan, take your medicine;Life must go on;I forget just why.
I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it. But she’s crying herself now. He’d be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.
Thank God,my name isn’t in the list of thosewho died or werekilled yesterday!
I have no fear of the dead. Indeed in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories. I’d had the good fortune of seeing several of them in my time.
You can’t argue with the dead, no matter what you say, they always have the last word.
…When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It’s like a fire you’ve tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind…. That’s why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.
Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change
Though you may hear me holler,And you may see me cry–I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,If you gonna see me die.
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it’s enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;Thus unlamented let me die;Steal from the world, and not a stoneTell where I lie.
I’m not proud of killing, of being responsible for the death of a single person. I never will be.
We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness – better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.
Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.
Wherever you feel death, feel it. Don’t escape. Death is beautiful; death is the greatest mystery, more mysterious than life. Through life you can gain the world, the futile world- meaningless, worthless. Through death you can gain the eternal. Death is the door.
I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ . . . ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered–not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some!
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .
In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die?
Was it not worth the loss of a little immortality to have that strange mix of innocence and strength close to him?
The landscape is best described as ‘pedestrian hostile.’ It’s pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.
He hadn’t woken a day since my death when the day wasn’t something to get through. But the truth was, the memorial service day was not the worst kind. At least it was honest. At least it was a day shaped around what they were so preoccupied by: my absence. Today he would not have to pretend he was getting back to normal—whatever normal was.
If one does die taking these drugs, the death is likely to be very peaceful. Morphia is, after all, the goddess of dreams.
We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.
Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?
Never shy away from telling those you love how you feel about them.You will never know if you will have another chance…
I’d give in to the grief but make sure I wasn’t loud enough to draw attention from those who think words will make me feel better.
They died together; they’ll always be remembered together. It’s decided, once and for all. He was hers.
Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever.
Killers aren’t always assassins. Sometimes, they don’t even have blood on their hands.
You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe
No! no! My engagement is with no bride–the worms! the worms expect me! I am a dead man–I have been slain by robbers–my body lies at Wurtzburg–at midnight I am to be buried–the grave is waiting for me–I must keep my appointment!
You may not believe in life, but I don’t believe in death. … The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity–it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
Death is a scandal. The machine is functioning, we are all hostages
Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.
She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her.
They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence, and out of that moment, heaven or hell is born.