“Dreams and death were old friends of his. He knew how to navigate their dark borderland.”

“There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth — yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

“He knew that there was death—that there must be death if there were evolution, that death was one of the mechanisms that biologically spelled progress and advancement for evolutionary species.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

“Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.”

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

“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes ad his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, 'Damn it,' he sighed. 'How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”

Gabriel García Márquez book The General in His Labyrinth

“Where shadows dim with shadows mate,
in caverns deep and dark.
Where old books dream of bygone days,
when they were wood and bark…”

Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books

“She realized all at once that Doon, thin, dark eyed Doon, with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket, and his good heart---- was the person she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend.
--City of Ember”

Jeanne DuPrau (1944) American writer

“He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack,
For he knew when he pleased he could whistle them back.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

“Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body.. . . Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies.”

Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) French theologian