Quotes about the dead
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“Over my dead body, I thought. Yes, even immortals use that phrase. It has extra oomph for us.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Immortal Beloved

“Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.”

Arthur C. Clarke book 2001: A Space Odyssey

1960s
Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) "Foreword"

“So, have a little fun. Soon enough you'll be dead and burning in Hell with the rest of your family.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Family, Hell

“Something had been buried that was not yet dead.”

Sebastian Faulks book Birdsong

Source: Birdsong

“The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.”

Mary Roach book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Source: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Way, Lying, Time

“Someone can break your heart, leave you dead on the lawn, and still you never learn what to say to stop it all over again.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Learning, Heart, Sad

“It is good that a man's enemies want him dead, for it proves he has lived a life of worth.”

Forrest Carter (1925–1979) Political speechwriter, politician, novelist, memoirist

Source: The Outlaw Josey Wales

Life

“Maryse sighed."Nothing conclusive. If only the dead could talk, eh, Lucian?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down.”

Stephen King The Dark Half

Source: The Dark Half

Lie, Sense

“The little bit you and me might change the world," Malloy smiled, "it wouldnt show up until a hundred years after we were dead. We'd never see it."

"But it'd be there.”

James Jones book From Here to Eternity

Source: From Here to Eternity

World, Smile, Change

“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

Variant: He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

“my hands dead
my heart dead
silence
adagio of rocks
the world ablaze
that's the best
for me.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

World, Silence, Heart

“We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

Life, God

“The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

“Dead bodies didn't resemble unconscious ones; it was as if you could sense that something had fled from them, that some essential spark was now missing.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Sense

“I tell you what's really ridiculous--going into a bookstore and there's all these books about yourself. In a way, it feels like you're already dead.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Books, Way, Feeling

“I was getting depressed. My life wasn't going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

Life, Drink, Light

“Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950’s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: The muffled thunder of dialogue comes through the walls, then a chorus of laughter. Then more thunder. Most of the laugh tracks on television were recorded in the early 1950s. These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.

People

“There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.”

Roger Zelazny book This Immortal

Source: This Immortal

“Within six months, if I am not dead, I shall have seen you again, madam--even if I have to overturn the world.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

World

“If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead.”

Sena Jeter Naslund (1942) American writer

Source: Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer

Life, Suffering, Time

“So go out and live real good and I promise you'll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you're dead, you'll be rotted away anyway. It's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Lufkin, Texas http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/lufkin-texas-jul1997-full.html (July 19, 1997) In Concert

“There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went, "" Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha—?”

Lorrie Moore Birds of America

Source: Birds of America

Life, Feeling

“No one knows why, but second only to eating the brains of the living, the dead love affordable prefab furniture.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror

Love

“One could argue that it's romantic to die for love. Of course, then you're dead and unable to take that honeymoon trip to the Alps with all the other fashionable young couples, which is a shame.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Love, Fashion

“One more dance along the razor's edge finished. Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Variant: Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.
Source: Lord of Chaos

Dance

“Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

War

“I hope you feel better today. Please ring me at work if you are dead.”

Jaclyn Moriarty book Feeling Sorry for Celia

Source: Feeling Sorry for Celia

Hope, Feeling

“The dead are never far from us. They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

Heart

“It is right to seek peace for the dead. You and I both know there is no peace for those who live after.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Peace

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

Men, Heart

“Valkyrie, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your friend is most likely dead.”
“Of course he’s dead. He’s a skeleton.”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Source: Dark Days

Hate

“Fang was going to kill me. And after I was dead, he would kill me again.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“People who say not to speak ill of the dead are hypocrites, because you can take it ot the bank they're thinking ill.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: High Noon

People, Thinking

“Most people call it The Book of the Dead,” he told me. “Rich Egyptians were always buried with a copy, so they could have directions through the Duat to the Land of the Dead. It’s like an Idiot’s Guide to the Afterlife.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

People, Books

“You may have the worst timing since Napoleon decided the dead of winter was the right moment to invade Russia.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Winter, Time

“Honor is a fool's prize. Glory is of no use to the dead.”

Drew Karpyshyn book Star Wars: Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Source: Path of Destruction

Fools

“I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“One more drink and you're dead. This is no way to talk to a suicide head.”

Charles Bukowski book Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Source: Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Way, Drink, Suicide

“Why not rise from the grave and terrorize a little instead of staying buried and dead in the cemetery?”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

“Everything is banal in experience, fleeting in duration, sordid in content; in all respects the same today as generations now dead and buried have found it to be.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“I was born wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born, and have made, in a curious way, the worst of both.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

World, Way

“A working brain is probably a lot like a map, where anybody can get from one place to another on the freeways. It's the nonworking brains that get blocked, that have dead ends, that are under construction like mine.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Life, Change

“Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Animals

“Things change whether you want them to, or not--unless you are dead. Don't hold so hard to the past that you die with it.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Change, Past

“Shall we never never get rid of this Past?… It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

Source: The House of the Seven Gables

Past

“If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned (2011)

“Oh Julie, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart?”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

Feeling, Heart

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Emotions", p. 36.
The Second Sin (1973)

Happiness, Children, Funny

“He had followed the trail left by a dead man. It was only now that he realized it might lead only to a grave.”

Anthony Horowitz book Stormbreaker

Source: Stormbreaker

“In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: The Silver Gryphon

Question, Fish

“I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead.”

Barry Eisler book A Clean Kill in Tokyo

Source: A Clean Kill in Tokyo

God, Parting

“What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite and because of their scars.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

People, Forgetting

“I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)”

Franz Wright (1953–2015) American poet

Source: Walking to Martha's Vineyard

Love, Death, People

“Name none of the fallen, for they stand in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.”

Steven Erikson book Deadhouse Gates

Source: Deadhouse Gates

Death

“Oh, how a small portion of earth will hold us when we are dead, who ambitiously seek after the whole world while we are living!”

Shiv Khera (1961) Indian politician

Source: You Can Win: A Step by Step Tool for Top Achievers

World

“If he had any kind of a clue, he wouldn’t be caught dead with that stuff. See what I did there? I crack myself up.” Eve sipped more coffee she probably, at this point, didn’t need.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

Coffee

“we know God is dead, they've told us, but listening to you I wasn't sure.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

God

“Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

“There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

World, Sense, Time, Night

“Do you know what most people have from their grandmother? A tea set. Or a quilt.” Curran smiled. “If your family had a quilt, it would be made out of chimera skin and stuffed with feathers from dead angels.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

People, Family, Smile, Angels

“To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Source: Gaudy Night

People, Envy, Sea

“There was nothing like having a dead husband return from the grave to ruin a fine spring morning.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Source: Second Sight

Spring

“O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude…”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

O May I Join the Choir Invisible (1867)
Source: O May I Join the Choir Invisible! And Other Favourite Poems
Context: O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's search To vaster issues.
Context: O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.