No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth’s wings. – Garraty’s thoughts on death and dying, The Long walk
Victory must be real. It must be earned. That means it must be rare and difficult, against steep odds, and defeat must be the other.
What do you want to do with your life, then?” is often the question I’m asked.To be honest, I don’t know. I really don’t.Mainly because I don’t see myself living long enough for that to make much of a difference.
Here at lastWe shall be free;the Almighty hath not builtHere for his envy, will not drive us hence:Here we may reign secure, and in my choiceTo reign is worth ambition though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
That which has died falls not out of the universe. If it stays here, it also changes here, and is dissolved into its proper parts, which are elements of the universe and of thyself. And these too change, and they murmur not.
If the radiance of a thousand sunsWere to burst at once into the skyThat would be like the splendour of the Mighty One…I am become Death,The shatterer of worlds.[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can’t avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.’s lover. Now it’s like an empty house.
I have no horror of death, and place no value on any god. Cease therefore. For I come ready to die; and first I bring you these gifts. (Mezentius)
When there is both name and reality, We dwell in the realm of things; When there is neither name nor reality, We exist in a vacuity of things. We can speak and can think, But the more we speak, the further off we are. What is not yet born cannot be forbidden, What is already dead cannot be prevented. Death and birth are not distant, It’s their principle that cannot be seen.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
If a grave is empty, is it a grave? I wonder how Jesus would answer that.
You can cry about death and very properly so, your own as well as anybody else’s. But it’s inevitable, so you’d better grapple with it and cope and be aware that not only is it inevitable, but it has always been inevitable, if you see what I mean.
We’ve learned from this that death can hurt us. It can surprise us. It can scare us. It can keep us up a night. But we’ve also learned the things that death cannot do. It cannot crush our hopes. It cannot take away the love and support of our family and friends. It cannot make us lose our unending faith in world and in God. It has saddened us, but it will not prevail.
So since I’m still here livin’,I guess I will live on.I could’ve died for love–But for livin’ I was born.
What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don’t change, you die. It’s that simple. It’s that scary.
It has always been this way. Death is followed by birth. To reach paradise, man must pass through inferno. – Bertrand Zobrist
And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.
Well, as to that, all I’ll say is, you can’t take out a fellow’s heart before he’s ready to give it up.
I wonder why the dead can’t talk, look at all the crimes we’d solve if the damn dead would just Ouija board us our answers, or tell all those weird psychic people who killed ’em.
Neville’s a pleasant sort of standby when there’s nothing more exciting on the go. A safe, attractive, reliable chap. He’s respectful, never having tried to get her into bed which, if she was a better sort of person, she might appreciate.
The bulletproof vest–‘bullet resistant,’ technically–is made of two double panels of a synthetic material called Kevlar, inside a cloth carrier that holds it around your torso like a lead X-ray smock. One cop wrote phrases from the Bible on his, ‘Yea, though I walk in the valley of the Shadow of Death…’ Other cops wrote their blood type.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds. We both know that’s bullshit; it comes from people who have nothing comforting or original to say.
Shouldn’t we be speaking of something more important than life and death?
I love you, he said, his voice catching. When I thought you were going to die, I wanted to die.
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower—suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.
How could the death of someone you had never met affect you so?
There once was a girl who found herself dead.She peered over the ledge of heavenand saw that back on earthher sister missed her too much,was way too sad,so she crossed some pathsthat would not have crossed,took some moments in her handshook them upand spilled them like diceover the living world.It worked.The boy with the guitar collidedwith her sister.There you go, Len, she whispered. The rest is up to you.
Demons, chaos, dragons – all of them are different incarnations and representations of our idea of death in ‘Dark Souls.’
We’re in the Maker’s keeping. Even if we die trying, death is just another way out. But you? You’ll just turn to dust.
I would rather live than die. I would rather die than survive as a monster.
When a crime is committed, only the victim and the victim’s close circle experience the event as pain, terror, death. To people hearing or reading about it, crime is a metaphor, a symbol of the ancient battles fought every day: evil versus good, chaos versus order.
Well I’d certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.
Why are you crying? This isn’t the end. Death isn’t goodbye forever.
There’s difference between being dead and dying. We’re all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.
That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it’s reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.
I’m not afraid of being dead. I’m just afraid of what you might have to go through to get there.
Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another.
Anyone in this world can have the power of life and death over someone else. It’s horrible, but true. All you need to do is take it. And once you have — there is no going back. (The Killer’s Cousin)
Does it hurt? The childish question had escaped Harry’s lips before he could stop it. Dying? Not at all, said Sirius. Quicker and easier than falling asleep.
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt
In my life Why do I give valuable time To people who don’t care if I live or die ?
A girl calls and asks, Does it hurt very much to die?Well, sweetheart, I tell her, yes, but it hurts a lot more to keep living.
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
Shakespeare’s enduring tragedy did its part to further the goals of the Mercenaries—glamorizing death, making dying for love seem the most noble act of all, though nothing could be further from the truth. Taking an innocent life—in a misguided attempt to prove love or for any other reason—is a useless waste.
Who said, ‘All Time’s delightHath she for narrow bed;Life’s troubled bubble broken’? —That’s what I said.
Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;Make dust our paper and with rainy eyesWrite sorrow on the bosom of the earth,Let’s choose executors and talk of wills
My mother’s death brought me to my knees. She was my hero, my role model, my very best friend. I spoke to her every single day of my life. I really tried hard when I grew up to make her proud of me.
The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.
Ten years, she’s dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.
I want you to stay, Harry. We need you. Me and Connor I grabbed his hand tighter. “But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it’s time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets. Because you were my best friend.
The day you lose someone isn’t the worst -at least you’ve got something to do- it’s all the days they stay dead.
Here I am…wanting to accomplish something and completely forgetting it must all end–that there is such a thing as death.
The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we’ve done fine tonight. Even Death can’t spoil it.
I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself.
The rule is that if they have a weapon and want to take you someplace else, it is so they can kill you slower–Peter