“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now.”

— Raymond Chandler , book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

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Raymond Chandler 124

Novelist, screenwriter 1888–1959

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 60

“I like sleeping. (after a pause) You were conceived in this bed.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

8 1/2 Women

“You look like an angel,
Sleeping it off at a station.
Were you only passing through?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)

“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“Were you watching me sleep? Because I thought we agreed that's creepy.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

“I thought you were dead,” she went on. “I saw you fall down, and—I thought you were dead.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home.”

Lev Grossman book The Magician's Land

Source: The Magician's Land

“You can sleep now, you said. You can sleep now. You said that.
I had a dream where you said that. Thanks for saying that.
You weren't supposed to.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!

As if there were no
such thing as integrity!”

Frank O'Hara book Lunch Poems

Source: Lunch Poems

“The worst thing about death is that you once were, and now you are not.”

José Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature

O pior da morte é que antes estavas e agora não estás.
Interview, O Saramago que conheço http://www.portal730.com.br/wellington-borges/o-saramago-que-conheco, Portal 730, 2010.

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