War is not just the business of death, it is the antitheses of life.
That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?
All great conversions are born from the sudden revelation of life’s meaninglessness. Nothing could be more moving or more impressive than this sudden apprehension of the void of existence.
There is a very popular opinion that choosing life is inherently superior to choosing death. This belief that life isinherently preferable to death is one of the most widespread superstitions. This bias constitutes one of the most obstinate mythologies of the human species.
Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.
There is no remedy for death—or birth—except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.
Madness doesn’t get off wearing gloves. It needs to feel skin on skin, smell the blood and shit as it brings itself off.
Here lies a gentleman boldWho was so very braveHe went to lengths untold,And on the brink of the graveDeath had on him no hold.By the world he set small store–He frightened it to the core–Yet somehow, by Fate’s plan,Though he’d lived a crazy man,When he died he was sane once more.
Love is like a flower. Its upright when its in harmony and withered when its dead.
I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it’s something to do with death or illness, though — I know that now.)
And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day.
One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.
How terrible, said Eragon, to die alone, separate even from the one who is closest to you.Everyone dies alone, Eragon. Whether you are a king on a battlefield or a lowly peasant lying in bed among your family, no one can accompany you into the void.
A person’s life isn’t orderly …it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.
I’m addicted to the heightened awareness I get when there’s a death consequence. My vision is sharper, and I’m more sensitive to sounds, my sense of balance and the beauty all around me. A lot of my creativity comes from this nearly insane obsession. Something sparkles in my mind, and then nothing else in life matters.
From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?
It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.
That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.
Death! Strange that there should be such a word, and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm and beautiful, full of hopes, desires and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!
Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.
If that’s the case, I understand why emotions are hard for you. You’ve numbed yourself to make room for the grief you carry.
You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water…
Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
If you really want to stay the same age you are now forever and ever, she’d be thinking, try jumping off the roof: death’s a sure-fire method for stopping time.
You’ve got to think of the fine times you had with your mate, not the moment of his perishin’. Every tear you shed now only wets his windin’ sheet and disturbs his rest
They looked to each other for support, for strength, and at times, motivation, to remember why and for whom they lived.
I said, ‘I need to know how he died.’He flipped back and pointed at, ‘Why?’So I can stop inventing how he died. I’m always inventing.
Remember me, even if it’s only in a corner and secretly. Don’t let me go.
You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn’t. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn’t. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn’t stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried.
I want to commit suicide but am afraid someone will think I am crazy.
I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.
Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.
How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?
Death is not the end death can never be the end. Death is the road. Life is the traveller. The Soul is the Guide
Teenagers watch and listen to all kinds of things. It is the nature of being a teenager to seek out intense stuff. Stuff about death and sex and love and fear. Teenagers are the bravest, most curious, most philosophical, most open-minded readers there are, which is why so many less-than-young adults like writing for them.
You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I’m not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
I will never be a fan of any kind of political correctness: I think it’s instant death to creativity.
Give yourself a gift: the present moment. People out for posthumous fame forget that the Generations To Come will be the same annoying people they know now. And just as mortal. What does it matter to you if they say -x- about you, or think -y-?
Few deaths can match the refined agony of being the one left behind
Sofya now understood the difference between life and existence: her life had come to an end, but her existence could drag on indefinitely. And however wretched and miserable this existence was, the thought of violent death still filled her with horror.
Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out.
YOU FEAR TO DIE?It’s not that I don’t want… I mean, I’ve always…it’s just that life is a habit that’s hard to break…
Some fail to bear in mind that everyone is sentenced to death. Death is a treacherous virus that strikes randomly. The only truth is that nobody is going to make it out alive. We are all living on probation and our expiry date is indefinite. ( “Living on probation” )
It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she’s gone. She’s gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it’s all I can do.
Isn’t life,’ she stammered, ‘isn’t life–‘ But what life was she couldn’t explain. No matter. He quite understood.’Isn’t it, darling?’ said Laurie.
Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, ‘I’ll be dead,’ you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul – it was a consequence of grammar.
She died in my arms, saying, I don’t want to die. That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.
Everyone was eating, talking softly, glancing at me, hugging me, eating. It was as if someone had turned the volume down. Everything looked normal, but the sound was muted. Death did this, set all this weirdness in motion, made people appear out of nowhere carrying casseroles, saying ‘I’m sorry’ over and over, death muffled their voices.
It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.
The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.
It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.
Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.
It comes with faith, for with complete faith there is no fear of what faces you in life or death.