Quotes about the dead
page 8
Source: When Darkness Comes
“Looks like it's time to liven up this dead little town!" - Saint Dane (The Reality Bug)”
Source: The Reality Bug
"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.
"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.
“What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he was dead?”
Source: Beautiful Ruins
“Take the dead from the dead, the old proverb said; only a corpse may speak true prophecy.”
Source: The Gunslinger
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.”
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.
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.
Source: The Little White Horse
“I will please shut the hell up the day you please drop the hell dead”
Source: Running with Scissors
Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking like an extra from The Walking Dead.”
Source: The House of Hades
“Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about. -- True North”
“These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”
Source: Lullaby
“You gotta find what you like and let it kill you.”
Variant: Find what you love and let it kill you.
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
Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)
“Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.”
Source: The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker
Essays, The Triumph of Easter (1938)
Source: The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays
Source: Frankenstein
Source: Tropic of Capricorn
Source: Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States
“But how do we even get to the land of the dead?” I asked. “I mean…without dying.”
Source: The Red Pyramid
Source: The Sweetest Thing
Source: Sunset Gun: Poems
“Don't wait until people are dead to give them flowers.”
Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide
“The dead are way more organized than the living.”
Source: Un Lun Dun
“my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.”
Source: Magic Burns
“If you wake up feeling no pain, you know you're dead. (Russian expression)”
Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
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
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.
“The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.”
“Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”
“Right," she said, "We're going to the Land of the Dead and I shouldn't think negative.”
Source: The Lightning Thief
“To lack feeling is to be dead, but to act on every feeling is to be a child.”
Source: The Way of Kings
Music, When Soft Voices Die http://www.readprint.com/work-1367/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821)
Source: The Complete Poems
“Paris is a place in which we can forget ourselves, reinvent, expunge the dead weight of our past.”
Source: Detour de France: An Englishman in Search of a Continental Education
