Quotes about the dead
page 8

“Murder? You mean he's dead?"
"No. He's resting comfortably," I said. "People always sleep best with their heads at a ninety-degree angle. He looks comfortable, doesn't he?"
(Paige & Elena)”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

People, Sleep

“Blood hell, what happened to you?" - Dante
The dark wisard and I had a mild disagreement." -Viper
What sort of disagreement?" -Dante
I thought he should be dead and he disagreed." -Viper”

Alexandra Ivy (1961) American novelist

Source: When Darkness Comes

Hell

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Source: Journal of Katherine Mansfield

Tree, Light

“They took a baseball bat
and whacked open his head.
Mummy Boy fell to the ground;
he finally was dead.
Inside of his head
were no candy or prizes,
just a few stray beetles
of various sizes.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories

Boy

“Looks like it's time to liven up this dead little town!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)”

D.J. MacHale book The Reality Bug

Source: The Reality Bug

Reality, Time

“I don't know why it's called "getting lost." Even when you turn down the wrong street, when you find yourself at the dead end of a chain-link fence or a road that turnd to sand, you are somewhere. It just isn't where you expected to be.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“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.”

Mary Karr (1955) American writer

Source: Lit

“They’re not dead,” I told the goat. “They both have pulses.” “Oh.” The goat sighed. “Well, give them a few more hours and they’ll probably be dead.” “What is wrong with you?” “Everything,” said the goat.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

“Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will (1929)
Source: Do What You Will: Twelve Essays
Context: Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

Life, People, Nature

“He hadn't told me everything, but I'd left him for dead. I guess we were just about even.”

Lilith Saintcrow book Strange Angels

Source: Strange Angels

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Solitude

“Doesn't surprise me," Nana snorted. "I wouldn't put anything past your late husband."
"He's not dead, Nana."
Nana sighed. "Hope springs eternal.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Hope, Spring, Past

“Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross.”

Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur

Source: Le Morte d'Arthur

Men, Parting

“Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

"On Delany the Magician", a foreword to Trouble on Triton (1996) by Samuel R. Delany, and reprinted in Acker's collection Bodies of Work (1996)
Source: Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Context: Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies. Aeneas did. Odysseus did. Listen to Delany, a prophet.

Books, Time, Reading

“You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead… We're nothing more than dust jackets for books… so many pages to a person…”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books, Knowledge, Personality

“Saint, n. A dead sinner, revised and edited.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings… but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“This is a story about a family and, as there is a ghost involved, you might cal it a ghost story. But every family is a ghost story. The dead sit at out tables long after they have gone.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Family

“There are no choices without personal freedom, Buckeroo. It's not us who are dead inside. These things you find so weak and contemptible in us - these are just the hazards of being free”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest (1996)

Freedom, Personality

“What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

“Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

“Zack shook his head. "I am glad you aren't mine. You're going to be dead before you're forty."
"No," rumbled my husband's soft deep voice from the hallway. "I'm going to be dead before she's forty.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

“I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
Context: I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Freedom

“Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Fish

“I may have been dead for the past hundred and fifty years, Susannah,… but that doesn't mean I don't know how people say good night. And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves.”

Meg Cabot book Ninth Key

Source: Ninth Key

People, Past, Night

“If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

As translated by William Scott Wilson. This first sentence of this passage was used as a military slogan during the early 20th century to encourage soldiers to throw themselves into battle. Variant translations:
Bushido is realised in the presence of death. In the case of having to choose between life and death you should choose death. There is no other reasoning. Move on with determination. To say dying without attaining ones aim is a foolish sacrifice of life is the flippant attitude of the sophisticates in the Kamigata area. In such a case it is difficult to make the right judgement. No one longs for death. We can speculate on whatever we like. But if we live without having attaining that aim, we are cowards. This is an important point and the correct path of the Samurai. When we calmly think of death morning and evening and are in despair, We are able to gain freedom in the way of the Samurai. Only then can we fulfil our duty without making mistakes in life.
By the Way of the warrior is meant death. The Way of the warrior is death. This means choosing death whenever there is a choice between life and death. It means nothing more than this. It means to see things through, being resolved.
I have found that the Way of the samurai is death. This means that when you are compelled to choose between life and death, you must quickly choose death.
The way of the Samurai is in death.
I have found the essence of Bushido: to die!
Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one's aim.
We all want to live. And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. But not having attained our aim and continuing to live is cowardice. This is a thin dangerous line. To die without gaining one's aim is a dog's death and fanaticism. But there is no shame in this. This is the substance of the Way of the Samurai. If by setting one's heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling.

Life, Way, Freedom, Heart

“Hello! Your dear father is unfortunately very dead," he called. "And you said my dispersal system would never work!”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.”

Elizabeth Goudge book The Little White Horse

Source: The Little White Horse

World, Spring, Flowers, Thinking

“Hard to argue with a woman, period. Only time a man wins with one of them is when the woman is either on TV or dead. (Jack)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Attitude

Time

“The lucky ones are just born dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“There are so many ways to be alive, but only one way to be dead.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Way

“I will please shut the hell up the day you please drop the hell dead”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Hell

“She was alive, and they were dead. She had to try to make her life big. As big as she could. She promised Bailey she would keep playing.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Life

“I’d have been dead a long time ago if not for my friends, one of whom had just jumped off the cliff after me.
I’d have been a lot more appreciative if he hadn’t pushed me first." ~Cassandra Palmer”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Time

“He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking like an extra from The Walking Dead.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Life

“Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

“The dead aren't scary. They are just sad.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Sadness

“If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Schizophrenia", p. 101.
The Second Sin (1973)

God

“The Suicide, as she is falling,
Illuminated by the moon,
Regrets her act, and finds appalling
The thought she will be dead so soon.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

Suicide

“The earth here is beautiful. And it still belongs to the dead.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Beauty

“These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby

People

“You gotta find what you like and let it kill you.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: Find what you love and let it kill you.

“I told you, Ms. Lane, never believe anything is dead-"
"- I know, I know, until you've 'burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Variant: Don't celebrate yet, Ms. Lane. Don't believe anything is dead until you've burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them.
Source: Bloodfever

Waiting

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead," he suggested. "After that my own rule is to let everything alone.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Friendship, Learning

“Only the forgotten are truly dead.”

Tess Gerritsen book The Sinner

Source: The Sinner

“You're a dead man, Arratay," Jerrel said through clenched teeth.

Halt smiled. "That's been said before. Yet here I am.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Lost Stories

Smile

“Something’s died in me,” she goes. “It took a long time for it to do it, but it’s dead. You’ve killed something, just like you’d took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Time

“What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know…. But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Madness

“Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
If cool my heart and high my head
I think 'How lucky are the dead.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

Dreams, Thinking, Suicide, Heart

“Maybe one morning I’ll wake up and step outside of myself to look back at the old me lying dead among the sheets.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Lying

“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Fear

“Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Death, Evil

“The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.”

Tess Gerritsen book The Sinner

Source: The Sinner

Hurt

“What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?…God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Essays, The Triumph of Easter (1938)
Source: The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays

God, Business, Evil

“But if we’re going to kill them all, we might as well make an occasion of it.”
Toshak shrugged. “Do as you wish,” he said. “Occasion or not, as long as they’re all dead, I’m happy.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

Happiness

“I am dead. I have no desire for you. My body no longer wants the one who doesn’t love.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

Love

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouthand lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Courage, Past

“I have heard people say that they felt closer to their parents after they have died. Maybe if I treat people as if they were dead, I could get along with them better”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

People, Parent

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Pain, Fear, Hope, Feeling

“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.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

For Father

“Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn

“Once lucky, twice confident, and thrice dead.”

Terry Goodkind Blood of the Fold

Source: Blood of the Fold

Confidence

“Nil desperandum, -- Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Despair

“The world of the dead wonʹt give you
up a second time.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

World, Time

“In the words of a very famous dead person, 'A nation that does not know its history is doomed to do poorly on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States

History, Personality

“Dead. Never been that before. Not even once.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

“I’ll stare the bastard in the face as he screams to God, and I’ll laugh harder when he whimpers like a baby. And when his eyes go dead, the hell I send him to will seem like heaven after what I’ve done to him.”

Frank Miller book The Hard Goodbye

Source: The Hard Goodbye

God, Hell, Baby

“But how do we even get to the land of the dead?” I asked. “I mean…without dying.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“What's so noble about being dead?”

Dalton Trumbo book Johnny Got His Gun

Source: Johnny Got His Gun

“Oh my God," Maddie whispered, horrified. "I rented him that boat. Does that make me a murderer?"

Tara's heart clutched. "He's not dead yet."

"Hurry," Maddie called to Ford. "I can't be the one who killed Tara's ex!" I look terrible in orange!”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: The Sweetest Thing

God, Heart

“How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

page 153
Source: Suttree (1979)

Death, Memory

“Accursed from their birth they be
Who seek to find monogamy,
Pursuing it from bed to bed—
I think they would be better dead.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Sunset Gun: Poems

Birth, Thinking

“Don't wait until people are dead to give them flowers.”

Sean Covey (1964) author; business executive

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

People, Flowers, Waiting

“The dead are way more organized than the living.”

China Miéville book Un Lun Dun

Source: Un Lun Dun

Way

“I feel like I'm lost in an anime movie" I said, as Coyote picked the thing up. "One of the tentacle-monster ones." Most of them were X-rated and ended up with a lot of dead people.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

People, Feeling, Animals

“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

World, Soul, Tree, Christmas

“If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.”

Don DeLillo book The Names

Source: The Names (1982), Ch. 4

Love, Literature

“In death, they all looked the same. This morning they spoke, they breathed, they kissed their loved ones good-bye. And now they lay dead. Gone forever.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Love, Death, Kiss

“He was obviously dead. But since he was a vampire that wasn't as hopeless a thing as it might have been.”

Patricia Briggs book Bone Crossed

Source: Bone Crossed

“I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“You can’t do damage control dead.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Burned

“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state on innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

People, Reality

“If you wake up feeling no pain, you know you're dead. (Russian expression)”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Pain, Feeling

“Jace: 'I don't like keeping her in the dark.'
Sebastian: 'We'll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?'
Jace: 'Two weeks ago you were dead.'
Sebastian: 'Well, I wasn't suggestingweeks. That would be insane.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Variant: I don’t like keeping her in the dark,” Jace said.
“We’ll tell her in a week. What difference does a week make?”
Jace gave him a look. “Two weeks ago you were dead.”
“Well, I wasn’t suggesting two weeks,” said Sebastian. “That would be insane.
Source: City of Lost Souls

“When you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Preface
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934)
Context: The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

Hell

“The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

“All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

World, Parent, Time