Quotes about the dead
page 10

“The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.”

Source: The Vampire Lestat

“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.”

John Banville The Sea

Source: The Sea

“I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Truth, Soul, Past

“I laughed as we turned in a tight circle… "Tonight you're all mine."

Jake smiled but looked me dead in the eye. "No. From now on."

My heart skipped. "What?"

"Yours," he said simply, "from now on.”

Kieran Scott (1974) American writer

Source: She's So Dead to Us

Smile, Heart

“Gentle lady, do not sing
Sad songs about the end of love;
Lay aside sadness and sing
How love that passes is enough.

Sing about the long deep sleep
Of lovers that are dead, and how
In the grave all love shall sleep:
Love is aweary now.”

James Joyce book Chamber Music

Source: Chamber Music

Love, Sadness, Lovers, Sleep

“What's a mediator you ask? Oh, a person who acts as a liason between the living and the dead. Hey, wait a minute… what're you doing with that strait jacket?-Suze Simon's imagination”

Meg Cabot book Twilight

Source: Twilight

Imagination, Waiting, Personality

“But I am dead certain--ba-dump-bump-ching--that I'm the first guy to lead an army of spirits in an assault from the spirit-world side… and had them start off screaming, "BOO!”

Jim Butcher book Ghost Story

Source: Ghost Story

World, Guy

“That thing that looks like me but isn't? He'll burn down the world if Sebastian wants him to, and laugh while he's doing it. That's what you're saving, Clary.. Don't you understand? I'd rather be dead”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

World, Understanding

“Fish," he said, "I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

Love, Fish

“Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Soul

“Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word - musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself:. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.”

Margaret Atwood book Alias Grace

Source: Alias Grace

Flowers, Strong, Night

“He stared dully at the desolate, cold road and the pale, dead night. Nothing was colder or more dead than his heart. He had loved an angel and now he despised a woman.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Love, Angels, Heart, Night

“Mind the dead man, my dear.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Carpe Corpus

“Is anyone who's supposed to be dead actually dead?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“She had wailed loudly enough to wake the dead and make them call the cops.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

“I see dead people. But, then by God, I do something about it!”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

God, People

“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Diplomatic Immunity

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Diplomatic Immunity (2002)

Justice, Cry

“Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

World, Beauty

“When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Ain't She Sweet

Love

“People with weaknesses get killed by the people who lack them. Notice I'm not dead.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

People

“And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.”

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

"The Truth the Dead Know"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)

Lie, Shoe, Sea

“A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?”

Alexander McCall Smith In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Source: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Life, People, Animals

“I thought you were dead.
Stupid. As if I'd die without taking you with me.”

Patricia Briggs book Silver Borne

Source: Silver Borne

Stupidity

“I love you, I love you, I love you! And if you ever die on me again, I'll kill you so dead! (Tabitha)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Seize the Night

Love

“By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.”

Koushun Takami book Battle Royale

Source: Battle Royale

Age

“Because the rhythm of conversation makes no allowance for dead periods, because the presence of others calls for continuous responses, we are left to regret the inanity of what we say, and the missed opportunity of what we do not.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: How Proust Can Change Your Life

“If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…

Game, Football

“The worst thing a girl can do is trail after a boy when a love affair is dead.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

Love, Girl, Boy

“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.”

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

Imagination, Knowledge

“Take your foot out of the graveyard,
they are busy being dead.”

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

Source: The Complete Poems

Business

“And also… well… i told them I want to get an apartment with him next year rather than live in the dorms."
What'd they say?"
Over their dead bodies."
What did you say?"
I asked whether they wanted to be burie or cremated.”

Carolyn Mackler (1973) American writer

“You're a man who has suffered and wants revenge,' she said. 'Your heart is dead, your soul is in darkness. The devil by your side is smiling because you are playing the game he invented.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Smile, Soul, Game, Revenge

“Write as if your parents are dead.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Parent

“If you're not dead, you're not done.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

The Christian Atheist: Believing in God but Living As If He Doesn't Exist

“The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

“All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one…”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

“This book, when I am dead, will be
A little faint perfume of me.
People who knew me well will say,
She really used to think that way.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

People, Books, Way, Thinking

“Dead was the gift that kept on giving. Dead, like
diamonds, was forever.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

“This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

Understanding

“I said earlier that dead things don't always stay dead.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“I haven't had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone's dead and my root beer's gone.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Beer, Thinking

“Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing, and they’re dead before they die.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

People, World

“i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Love, People, Reading, Perfection

“Doctor."" Gideon set one ankle on the opposite knee and settled back, creating a picture of unyielding decisiveness.
""The only way I'm keeping my hands off her is if I'm dead. Find another way to fix us.""”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Chapter 3 pg 50
Source: Reflected in You

Way, Decision

“I merely feel emptyness. A hollow of dead brush where flowers use to bloom.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Feeling, Flowers

“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Love, Life, Heart

“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

Henry, Act II, scene V
Source: The Real Thing (1982)

Children, World, Thinking

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Happiness

“Out here, it's better safe than sorry, because generally speaking, too much of the time sorry means you're dead.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: Across the Great Barrier

Time

“Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. book Strength to Love

Source: Strength to Love

Love, Hate, Joy, Selfishness

“The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Parting

“I g-g-guess… I'm dead?" she heard her own voice call out, strangely high-pitched and thin.
For a long time, she heard nothing else. And then:
"Hi, Dead. I'm Dan.”

Peter Lerangis book The Sword Thief

Source: The Sword Thief

Time

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Beauty, Art, Science

“Some of us are like the Dead Sea, always taking in but never giving out, because we are not rightly related to the Lord Jesus.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Sea

“Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: The Works Of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. Iii

Faith, Knowledge, Tree

“You! You are so lucky you're dead.”

Kat Richardson (1964) American writer

Greywalker

“She had what it took: great hair, a profound understanding of strategic lip gloss, the intelligence to understand the world and a tiny secret interior deadness which meant she didn’t care.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

Secret, World, Intelligence, Understanding

“When the Dead do walk, seek water’s run,
For this the Dead will always shun.
Swift river’s best or broadest lake
To ward the Dead and haven make.
If water fails thee, fire’s thy friend;
If neither guards, it will be thy end.”

Garth Nix book Abhorsen

Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 359-360.

Water

“Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, p. 118
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Life, Courage

“If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Zombies Vs. Unicorns

Love, Life, Peace, Sleep

“Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Past, Future

“I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.”

Irwin Shaw (1913–1984) American politician

Idea, Drink

“… but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it…”

Frank O'Hara book Lunch Poems

Source: Lunch Poems

Decision, Night

“I will not say that your mulberry-trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1811-05-31) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters
Source: Jane Austen's Letters

Tree

“If I were dead and buried And I heard your voice, Beneath the sod My heart of dust Would still rejoice.”

Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976) American screenwriter and novelist

Heart

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”

Evelyn Waugh book Scoop

Source: Scoop (1938)

Reading

“Swear to me swear to me that if it isn't dead you'll all come back.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It

“But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Stupidity, Sadness, Feeling

“The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.”

Philip K. Dick book VALIS

Source: VALIS

“Better stupid and safe that smart and dead.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Sweep: Volume 1

Stupidity

“I had carried on when all I wanted was to be dead. I had stayed alive for other people. I never stayed alive for myself. I cannot begin to describe the intensity of that effort.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

People, Effort

“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Shrike and the Chipmunks", The New Yorker (18 February 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). Because it is derived from Benjamin Franklin's famous saying this is often misquoted as: Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“Okay, Shane," Agnes said as Brenda's clock gonged midnight. "I got Joey in the kitchen, a cop in the front hall, a dead body in the basement, and you in my bedroom. Where do you want to start?”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Agnes and the Hitman

“I was dead until you found me, though I breathed. I was sightless, though I could see. And then you came… and I was awakened.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened