Quotes about death
page 18

“No one can say that death found in me a willing comrade, or that I went easily.”

Source: Clockwork Princess

“we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Life, Thinking

“The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: Theory of Religion

Life, World

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be in pain, and I definitely don’t want to suffer.” – Nick
“Well…The only way to avoid them is to die.” – Death
“Okay, let’s change the topic now. Oh, look! A chicken.” – Nick”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Pain, Way, Suffering, Change

“The Truth is in the prolouge.
Death to the romantic fool.,
the expert in solitary confinement.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

Truth, Fools

“I will tell you something about stories… They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”

Leslie Marmon Silko book Ceremony

Source: Ceremony

Fools, Fight

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love, Loyalty

“Well, I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death."
He blinked. "There is a fine line between sarcasm and outright hostility, and you seem to have crossed it. What's up?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Hate, Hostility, Night

“Death is a mystery, and burial is a secret.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Stephen King in introduction.
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)

Secret

“There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Change, Time, Despair

“Life is short, death is forever”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned

Life

“For love and beauty and delight, there is no death nor change.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Love, Beauty, Change

“That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.'
Clowns.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Fear, Failure, Question, Night

“Everyone’s death means something”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Way

“When old friends get together, everything else fades to insignificance."- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death”

Robert Lynn Asprin book Myth Directions

Source: Myth Directions

War

“I wasn't particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don't have to die the next.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Way, Personality

“I may not agree with what you have to say but I will fight you to the death for the right to fight you to the death.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Fight

“I never said that. I just didn't correct you when you were, you know, wrong. Anyway, I just saved you from being burned to death, so I figure you're not allowed to be mad." -Jace”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Madness

“Only those few who are able to surpass their fear of death completely can fully experience the highest forms of life; not the mundane life of the mortal, but the godly life of the resurrected.”

Zeena Schreck (1963) Tantric Buddhist/Sethian

Life, Fear

“In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, if anything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory or extinction, one thing has never been in doubt - that you would at least know the answer when you were dead.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Hell, Rage, Dead

“I flash him number seventeen of my thirty-five Looks of Death.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

“Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Source: Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology

Life

“Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

“Ice is for death and endings.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana

Source: Tigana

“Death is a continuation of my life without me…”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Life

“Every life has death and every light has shadow. Be content to stand in the light and let the shadow fall where it will.”

Mary Stewart book The Hollow Hills

Source: The Hollow Hills

Life, Light

“You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.”

Paula Poundstone (1959) American comedian

Feeling, Time

“That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Life, People, Thinking, Dead

“I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Feeling, Idea

“When we have lost everything, including hope, life becomes a disgrace, and death a duty.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Life, Hope

“And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Food, Way

“I thought of love as a game. It is not a game. It is more serious than death.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Love, Game

“My conscience is killing me, isn't it? And when you're immortal that can be a really long and ignominious death”

Anne Rice The Tale of the Body Thief

Source: The Tale of the Body Thief

“Embrace the probability of your imminent death…. and know there is nothing i can do to save you.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Death is the reward for living”

Sylvia Browne (1936–2013) American author

Source: Life on the Other Side: A Psychic's Tour of the Afterlife

“That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Life, People, Fear, Indifference

“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Dependency

“Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

Life

“Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
---"On death”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Life, Dreams, Sleep

“I’d never seen anything like it. First a trial, then a few murders, then dancing. Life goes on. Or, in this case, death continues.”

Charlaine Harris (1951) American writer

Life, Dance

“Fine. Let’s begin with something even you can’t screw up.” – Death
“Way to build up my crappy confidence there. You should volunteer for the suicide hotline.” – Nick
“What makes you think I don’t?” – Death”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Way, Confidence, Thinking, Suicide

“I'm tired and I'm sick to death of being without you.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

“The hands of Fate keep time on a heart-shaped watch."

- Harkat Mulds(The Trials of Death)”

Darren Shan book Trials of Death

Source: Trials of Death

Fate, Time, Heart

“" screamed Picchu from somewhere in the background. "Do it now and avoid the June rush! Fear death by water!”

Diane Duane book Deep Wizardry

Source: Deep Wizardry

Fear, Water

“So I am death" Charlie said then turned to his daughter while buttering his toast.

"This is death toast sweety.”

Christopher Moore book A Dirty Job

Source: A Dirty Job

Daughters

“We all owe death a life.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Life

“We don't know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realize what you are. That's what death is, don't you think?”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

People, Thinking

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Fear, Suffering

“We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

Light

“Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Source: The Solace of Open Spaces

Autumn, Water, Season

“Death has more in common with Love than you might imagine.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Love, Imagination

“I was no longer sexually vulnerable to the death-by-sex Fae Prince.
Jericho Barrons was my poison now.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Sex

“Gale and I were thrown together by a mutual need to survive. Peeta and I know the other's survival means our own death. How do you side step that?”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“A community where everyone is a ruthless murderer, with handy access to death-dealing devices, is a very polite community.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Source: Time Enough for Love

Communication

“Child of lightning, beware the earth,
The giants' revenge the seven shall birth,
The forge and the dove shall break the cage,
And death unleash through Hera's rage.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Birth, Revenge, Rage

“Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Source: Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition

“Death is not goodbye.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Life, Hate, World, Religion

“Each child’s story is worthy of telling. There shouldn’t be a sliding scale of death. The weight of it is crushing.”

Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author

Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

“… women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps… they ate suffering a slow death of mind and spirit.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Source: The Feminine Mystique

Women, Suffering

“The trick to having obedient, unquestioning children was to have death be the other option”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Children

“Since when do we even play games?”

“Since when don’t we play games? Games of life, games of death. Games of love, of hope, of chance, of despair, and of all the myriad wonders in between.”

I rolled my eyes at the newcomer. “Hello, Carter.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

Love, Life, Hope, Game

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Essays: A Selection

Life

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.”

Joan D. Vinge (1948) American writer

“Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.”

Ian Fleming book The Spy Who Loved Me

Source: The Spy Who Loved Me

Love, Life

“The seconds tick. They always do. The power of an entire sun cannot stop them even for a moment, and so death comes between the moments, like a thief of light in the dark.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

Light, Sun

“Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Life

“Old age is not as honorable as death, but most people seek it.”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Fall of Kings

People, Age

“pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Source: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

Pain, Pleasure, Intelligence

“We are always dying, all the time. That's what living is; living is dying, little by little. It is a sequenced collection of individualized deaths.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Time

“Don't fear death, fear the un-lived life”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Variant: dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.
Source: Tuck Everlasting

Life, Fear

“What are clouds, but an excuse for the sky? What is life, but an escape from death?”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Yabu-san's death poem after being ordered to commit seppuku.
Shōgun (1975)

Life

“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Change

“I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find… I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

Life, Happiness, Hope, Business

“The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

Life, Time

“Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Life, Birth

“Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destory?”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life

“Feed your faith and your doubts will starve to death.”

Debbie Macomber (1948) American writer

Source: Mrs. Miracle

Faith

“Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.”

Walt Whitman Starting from Paumanok

Starting from Paumanok. 12
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Beauty

“Reproduction is more pleasurable than death.”

Herman E. Daly (1938) American economist

Pleasure

“Life is a predicament which precedes death.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Life

“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Birth, Forgetting

“There was something so primal and hungry about the way he stared down at her.. the way their bodies unconsciously strained toward one another as if nothing - not even time, not distance, not even death- could ever keep them apart.”

Amanda Stevens (1977)

Source: The Restorer

Way, Time

“Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

Sleep

“Life, not death, is the great mystery you must confront.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Life

“A general never shows despair. He instills confidence in his troops. He leads them forward, even into the mouth of death.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Confidence, Despair

“The brain acknowledged the approach of death while the heart stubbornly insisted upon immortality.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Heart

“Jesus, you've got a death wish."
"Right now I have a bathroom-and-sleep-somewhere safe wish, kid.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

Sleep

“A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Life, Tree

“echo, the death of a sound that had nowhere to go but to come back.”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

“Nico realized he was still leaning against Will. He pushed him away and stood on his own two feet.
‘I’ll do what I need to.’
Will rolled his eyes. ‘Fine, Death Boy. If you want to get yourself killed –’
‘Do not call me Death Boy!”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Boy

“When you reach the stars, boy, yes, and live there forever, all the fears will go, and Death himself will die.”

Ray Bradbury book The Halloween Tree

Source: The Halloween Tree

Fear, Star, Boy

“Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Beauty

“One false step, and you’ll fall all the way to Tartarus—and believe me, unlike the Doors of Death, this would be a one-way trip, a very hard fall! I willhave you dying before you tell me your plan for my artwork.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Way, Falseness

“Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill - or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death.”

Garth Nix book Mister Monday

Source: Mister Monday

“I'll say God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I'm not crazy about. I'm pretty much anti-death. God looks by all accounts to be pro-death. I'm not seeing how we can get together on this issue, he and I…”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

God

“Everyone knows you can't see death cooties. Take my word for it, that couch has the biggest, fattest death cooties that ever existed. That couch has the mother of all death cooties. – Lula”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Quotes about death page 18

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Quotes about death
page 18