c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Oh God, Alaska, I love you. I love you," and the Colonel whispered, "I'm so sorry, Pudge. I know you did," and I said, "No. Not past tense." She wasn't even a person anymore, just flesh rotting, but I loved her present tense.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
— Anne Sexton
Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting. Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his--Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear--He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as wel say that birth doesn’t matter.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
They died together; they'll always be remembered together. It's decided, once and for all. He was hers.
— Rebecca Serle, When You Were Mine
The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
The father hesitated only a moment. He felt the vague pain in his chest. If I run, he thought, what will happen? Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts. And we've done fine tonight. Even Death can't spoil it.
— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
When Sherri asks questions about who would find me if I killed myself and what their reaction would be, I think that whoever knew me would be sad. But then everybody would get over it. I would fade away. I don't think I'm that important to anyone. Nobody's opinion about me killing myself would stop me from doing it.
— Albert Borris, Crash Into Me
To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone.
— Teju Cole, Open City
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! The grave! It buries every error - covers every defect - extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
— Washington Irving
I don't think that science and the paranormal have to be at war; in fact, it's crucial that they work together. It seems naïve to believe that the world is exactly as it seems.
— Chelsie Shakespeare, The Pull
Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.
— Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey
I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.
— Maureen Johnson, The Name of the Star
The lucky ones are just born dead.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
For a moment amongst the crowd, I saw you. I've since found out it's common for people separated from someone they love to keep seeing that loved one amongst strangers; something to do with recognition units in our brain being too heated and too easily triggered. This cruel trick of the mind lasted only a few moments, but was long enough to feel with physical force how much I needed you.
— Rosamund Lupton, Sister
When we see death, we see disaster. When Jesus sees death, he sees deliverance!
— Max Lucado
I have every reason to be sad, but I don't have any reason to mourn. People grieve when things end. Nothing has ended tonight. One of us has simply gone ahead as we always knew it would have to be.
— Samantha Sotto, Before Ever After
A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
What can I say? I prefer to die well informed.
— Nalini Singh, Angels' Blood
Now that her spirit had left, I’d thought she would feel light. Then I realized it was the spirit that carries the weight of the body and not the other way around.
— Jessica Maria Tuccelli, Glow
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
— William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude: Being the Second Part of Reflections and Maxims Relating to the Conduct of Human Life.
They said she killed herself.Everyone was saying It. What started out as a rumor, quietly whispered among small gatherings of polite people, quickly grew into something that was openly discussed in a large gatherings of impolite people. I was so sick of hearing them talk about It. They questioned me. Over and over again, trying to find out If i knew what happened. But my answers didn't change. Yet It never failed-someone else would ask, as if one day my reply would suddenly be different. I didn't know, but i should have...and I've been haunted ever since.
— Jessica Verday, The Hollow
Was it not worth the loss of a little immortality to have that strange mix of innocence and strength close to him?
— Nalini Singh, Angels' Blood
The most ruthless of all humans are the ones cornered in by death.
— Yuu Watase, Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden, Vol. 06
Death cuts off possibilities. Even if they were possibilities you never meant to act on, it feels differentwhen they’re gone.
— Eileen Wilks, Mortal Ties
Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
He thought he saw some horses, too, and a clown, but it was the faces of all those dead raptors that really bothered him. And maybe that clown a little bit.
— Vernon D. Burns, Gods of the Jungle Planet
I was not, I was, I am not, I care not. (Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo)
— Epicurus
Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
— Wilfred Owen, The Poems Of Wilfred Owen
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.
— Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
I exist here, now. I'm not much interested in the future. Or, more precisely put, I do not believe in the future. To exaggerate a little, I have no faith that I will still exist tomorrow or the day after. What is more, I absolutely detest retrospection. That dislike is balances only by my desire to make my way back home as quickly as possible.
— Yohji Yamamoto, My Dear Bomb
O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They think that when it comes to them there will be a lesson, a meaning, a story worth telling. That death will come to them as a dread scholar, a fell knight, a terrible emperor.Death is a bored clerk, with too many orders to fill. There is no reckoning. No profound moment. It creeps up on us from behind, and snatches us away while we shit.
— Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes
The foolish rush to end their lives.Only the steadfast soul survives.
— Christine de Pizan, Lyric Poetry
The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
You've got to think of the fine times you had with your mate, not the moment of his perishin'. Every tear you shed now only wets his windin' sheet and disturbs his rest
— L.A. Meyer, Bloody Jack
...a third [of three] had died in his bunk of natural causes--for a dagger in the heart quite naturally ends one's life.
— R.A. Salvatore
Knackered inmates are easier to control than pumped-up ones. And dead inmates are even easier to control, if you follow me.
— Alexander Gordon Smith, Lockdown
I was such a messed up person and he was still holding on.
— Holly Hood, Prison of Paradise
It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.
— Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall on Your Knees
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.
— Meghan O'Rourke
L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.'She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling. . .Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after.
— Francesca Lia Block, Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories
Sprawled out on the front lawn Looking up at an ordinary sky It could fall on me and somehow be The day I didn't die
— Nick Burd, The Vast Fields of Ordinary
In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started whispering to me when I was in the detention center.
— Chris Cleave, Little Bee
أحمق من يستسلم للموت طالما الحياة ممكنة
— منذر بدر حلوم, أولاد سكينة أو خروج الأقدام الحافية
When your demon was yourself, there really was no way to fight or get rid of it.
— Holly Hood, Prison of Paradise
I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.
— Libba Bray
You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.
— Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place
When (The World According To) Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. ‘’I lost one, too,’’ they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. (afterword)
— John Irving, The World According to Garp
Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.
— Stevie Smith, Selected Poems
There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live. It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment of your existence may be only a breath away from being the last. We would be continuously devastated by the magnitude of that inescapable fact. Still, as we mature into our mortality, we begin to gingerly dip our horror-tingling toes into the void, hoping that our mind will somehow ease itself into dying, that God or some other soothing opiate will remain available as we venture into the darkness of non-being.
— Aleksandar Hemon
Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some final resolution, some clear meaning, which it perhaps never finds.
— Robert Woodruff Anderson, I Never Sang for My Father
He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognised as finally annulled. A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death's defeat.
— Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation
Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.
— Frank Herbert, Dune
Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.How would that be? Just how would that be?
— Stephen King, The Long Walk
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand. Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions 'on the further shore,' pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There's not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn't be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! 'Things on this side are not so different after all.' There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower—suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.
— Katharine Hepburn
When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.
— H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines
His face set in grim determination, Richard slogged ahead, his fingers reaching up to touch the tooth under his shirt. Loneliness, deeper than he had never known, sagged his shoulders. All his friends were lost to him. He knew now that his life was not his own. It belonged to his duty, to his task. He was the Seeker. Nothing more. Nothing less. Not his own man, but a pawn to be used by others. A tool, same as his sword, to help others, that they might have the life he had only glimpsed for a twinkling.He was no different from the dark things in the boundary. A bringer of death.
— Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule
And when suddenlythe god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Just remember, what the French say. No, probably not the French, they've got a president or something. The Brits, maybe, or the Swedes. You know what I mean?""No, Matthew. What do they say?""The king is dead, that's what they say. The king is dead. Long live the king.
— Neil Gaiman, The Wake
Dante: Evergreens aren't supposed to die
— Yvonne Wood, Dead Beautiful
Good thing I'm aging, otherwise I'd be dead.
— Ana Monnar
Ah, life's little surprises! They can make any day unforgettable... or make it your last.
— T.A. Barron
Love is like a flower. Its upright when its in harmony and withered when its dead.
— Dalia
I am dying now, but I still have many things to say.
— Roberto Bolaño, By Night in Chile
He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness.
— Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.
— M. Jones, Frankie And Formaldehyde
I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Somerled.
— Juliet Marillier, Wolfskin
The candle glimmers but an hour. The nightLooms in its ancient hunger. Would you knowThe tragedy of human love and need?Gaze on the stars, then on a brother's face!
— George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror
She had died at age twelve, and by now she was nothing but the memory of love-- nothing, now, but bones.
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
I've grieved enough for his life cut short and for mine for running on for so long with so little in it. It's weakness now, but I suppose I am crying out of a general sense of loss. Maybe I am mourning for the human condition.
— Rosie Thomas, Iris & Ruby
The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron, and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, and the mechanism understood; as though that arrangement of wood and iron and rope expressed a will. In the hideous picture which its presence evokes it seems to be most terribly a part of what it does. It is the executioner's accomplice; it consumes, devouring flesh and drinking blood. It is a kind of monster created by the judge and the craftsman; a spectre seeming to live an awful life born of the death it deals.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The thin line between life and death is still under construction.
— Santosh Kalwar, Adventus
The painful truth about life is not death but death while you are alive.
— Santosh Kalwar
In the days after my heart attack & before I began to write again, all I could think about was dying. I'd been spared again, and only after the danger had passed did I allow my thoughts to unravel to their inevitable end. I imagined all the ways I could go. Blood clot to the brain. Infarction. Thrombosis. Pneumonia. Grand mal obstruction to the vena cava. I saw myself foaming at the mouth, writhing on the floor. I'd wake up in the night, gripping my throat. And yet. No matter how often I imagined the possible failure of my organs, I found the consequence inconceivable. That it could happen to me. I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.
— Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
I know that a stranger's hand will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St. John's last hour: his mind will be unclouded; his heart will be undaunted; his hope will be sure; his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this: “My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily he announces more distinctly, ‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond, ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
There is sorrow enough in the natural wayFrom men and woman to fill our day;But when we are certain of sorrow in store,Why do we always arrange for more?Brothers & Sisters, I bid you bewareOf giving your heart to a dog to tear.
— Rudyard Kipling
Silence is a lie that screams at the light.
— Shannon L. Alder
Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down
Watch birth and death:The lotus has alreadyOpened its flower.
— Sōseki Natsume
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--And admirably schooled in every grace:In fine, we thought that he was everythingTo make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head.
— Edwin Arlington Robinson
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people
— Heinrich Heine
In any case, this is how all our stories begin, in darkness with our eyes closed, and all our stories end the same way, too, with all of us uttering some last words—or perhaps someone else’s—before slipping back into darkness as our series of unfortunate events comes to an end.
— Lemony Snicket, The End
I don't say goodbye very easily, Anna. Not gracefully or prettily.Goodbye tears your heart out and leaves it a feast for carrion birds who happen by.
— Patricia Briggs, Dead Heat
Mama said it's probably because of Suzanne, and that you are never the same after a child dies. That made me wonder what she was like before Clover died, because I don't think I really knew my own mother until I had children, and if she was different before, I don't remember.
— Nancy E. Turner, These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901
It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.
— Philip José Farmer
La mayoría de la muerte de la gente es una farsa, no queda en ellos nada que pueda morir
— Charles Bukowski, The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
— Kahlil Gibran
a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.
— José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Dear as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'dOn lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
— Alfred Tennyson
We are graced with a godlike ability to transcend time and space in our minds but are chained to death.
— Russell Shorto, Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason
Song after Battle:As the young men went by I was looking for him. It surprises me anew That he has gone. It is something To which I cannot be reconciled.Owls hoot at me. Owls hoot at me. That is what I hear In my life. Wolves howl at me. Wolves howl at me. That is what I hear In my life. -American Indian Songs
— Frances Densmore
Conner hadn’t liked leaving the gravesite with his father still not buried. But he’d learned from his grandmother’s funeral that you have to go. It’s expected. Nobody hangs around the cemetary. Grief—a little or a lot—is tucked into your pocket and carried away.
— Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, Gone
Everyone knows that part of the spirit descends to the afterworld, while part of it remains with the family, but we have a special belief about the spirit of a young woman who has died before her marriage that goes contrary to this. She comes back to prey upon other unmarried girls--not to scare them but to take them to the afterworld with her so she might have company.
— Lisa See
Heaven is a place where all the dogs you've ever loved come to greet you.
— Oliver Gaspirtz, Pet Humor!
Death was kind.” He drew a sharp breath. “But no father should have to give such a kindness to his child.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
Science ask facts and religion ask faith, humans are confused between life and death.
— Santosh Kalwar
He said, "Were he only like his sister—what a difference that would make! For there never was such a sweet and gentle lady! I hear her footsteps, as she goes about the world. I hear the swish-swish-swish of her silken gown and the jingle-jangle of the silver chain about her neck. Her smile is full of comfort and her eyes are kind and happy! How I long to see her!" "Who, sir?" asked Paramore, puzzled. "Why, his sister, John. His sister.
— Susanna Clarke, The Sandman: Book of Dreams
Love is bitter, death is sweet.
— Jack Kerouac, Maggie Cassidy
The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale
—  and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates.
The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Human efforts to avoid or overcome death are always doomed to disappointment.
— J.K. Rowling
Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.
— Vicki Harrison
What if it's as simple as one moment? One tiny thing, like that kiss on the rocks? What if I'd kissed him a little longer? Would he be alive right now? Or what if I'd stayed with him Friday night, what if I'd been with him… wherever he was?
— Kristina McBride, One Moment
When the sun shall be folded up
—  and when the stars shall fall
Every man believes to some extent that the world began when he was born and, at the moment of leaving it, suffers at having to let the Universe remain unfinished.
— Maurice Druon, El rey de hierro
You may say suicide is a loss of control and cowardly. Foolish as it may sound, I am prepared to argue.
— Dee Remy, There Once Was A Boy
It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.
— Terry Pratchett, Pyramids
Harry lost any sense of where they were: Streetlights above him, yells around him, he was clinging to the sidecar for dear life. Hedwig’s cage, the Firebolt, and his rucksack slipped from beneath his knees —“No — HEDWIG!”The broomstick spun to earth, but he just managed to seize the strap of his rucksack and the top of the cage as the motorbike swung the right way up again. A second’s relief, and then another burst of green light. The owl screeched and fell to the floor of the cage.“No — NO!”The motorbike zoomed forward; Harry glimpsed hooded Death Eaters scattering as Hagrid blasted through their circle. —”But the owl lay motionless and pathetic as a toy on the floor of her cage.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
I'm not courting death
—  I've far too many books left to read.
June is gone. For the first time, the enormity of that hits me. Every muscle aches, my heart most of all. I am throbbing with how much I miss her. It hurts worse than anything. I don't know how I'm supposed to be expected to live day to day carrying this kind of pain. I don't know how I'm supposed to go out there, spread her ashes, and let her go.I want to stop running away from everything.I want to find something to run toward.
— Hannah Harrington, Saving June
I'll never be ready. Yet at the same time, you always want to reach the end. You can't fly to a destination and linger in the air. I want to reach the end of this thing, and I feel terrible about it.
— Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants
I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I'm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children. There will be no survivors." The shock I've been feeling begins to give way to fury. "I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a cease-fire, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do." My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. "This is what they do and we must fight back!""President Snow says he's sending a message. Well I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?" One of the cameras follows where I point to the planes burning on the roof of a warehouse across from us. "Fire is catching!" I am shouting now, determined he will not miss a word of it, "And if we burn, you burn with us!
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
Romeo: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Pain, unless it is physical, was sold to you (by your culture).
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I wish I could fly like that hawk, rising and falling with the still spaces in the air, far above all this sickness and death and evil.
— Heather Day Gilbert, God's Daughter
I wish I could recommend the experience of not being killed to everyone.
— Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
We are only an instant, that's true. But we are eternal.
— Alice Hoffman, The Foretelling
This was how an enemy should be dealt with: with a dagger, not a declaration.
— George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
When it's my time, and the reaper calls my name, there will be no stink of fear on me, and my only wish will be to die with grace, covered in the blood of my enemies.
— Cedric Nye, Jango's Anthem
Death is a part of Life, they are dancing together the dance of infinity in front of the gates of Time. We can live our dreams as we are dreaming our future. Time is the Endless Consciousness
— Grigoris Deoudis
The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.
— Irvine Welsh, Filth
...do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone?
— David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Hell, I don't want to grow old at all. I never want to die.
— Kate Millett, Sita
Fear leads to death as the window to the courtyard. Jump!
— Grigoris Deoudis
That's what death is, Danny thought: wanting to talk to someone and not being able to.
— Jennifer Egan, The Keep
I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.""Do you want to die old and craven in your bed?""How else? Though not till I'm done reading.
— George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.
— Rick Yancey, The Isle of Blood
In fact living is dying.
— Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami
Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,And I had put awayMy labour, and my leisure too,For his civility.We passed the school where children played,Their lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.We paused before a house that seemedA swelling of the ground;The roof was scarcely visible,The cornice but a mound.Since then 'tis centuries; but eachFeels shorter than the dayI first surmised the horses' headsWere toward eternity.
— Emily Dickinson
Once very near the end I said, 'If you can -- if it is allowed -- come to me when I too am on my death bed.' 'Allowed!' she said. 'Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into bits.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
When it comes, you’ll be dreamingthat you don’t need to breathe;that breathless silence isthe music of the darkand it’s part of the rhythmto vanish like a spark.
— Wisława Szymborska
Here be dragons to be slain, here be rich rewards to gain;If we perish in the seeking, why, how small a thing is death!
— Dorothy L. Sayers, Catholic Tales and Christian Songs
Part of this experience involves your being able to say to a person who is dying, "You are loved. You are beautiful. You are like a newborn babe, going into another realm. Release now anyone, and everything, that is a burden to you. Release everything and know that you have lived your life to the fullest. There is no judgment on you. Go in peace, put a smile on your face, and release any judgments you hold. Relax, and allow your life to have meaning as you embark on the next phase of your identity.
— Barbara Marciniak, Earth: Pleiadian Keys to the Living Library
Facing death calmly is praiseworthy only if one faces it alone. Death together is no longer death, even for unbelievers. The source of sorrows lies not in leaving life, but in leaving that which gives it meaning. When love is our whole life, what difference is there between living together and dying together ?
— Raymond Radiguet, The Devil in the Flesh
I've been asked by lots of people, "What happens if you do kill yourself?" They want to know about what it would be like for other people around you, like the person who would find your body, the other kids at school, whoever would have to clean up the blood, what your family holidays would be like.
— Albert Borris, Crash Into Me
We live, we love, we let it go.
— Kevin Dalton
We are tiny flames, Helikaon, and we flicker alone in the great dark for no more than a heartbeat. When we strive for wealth, glory and fame, it is meaningless. The nations we fight for will one day cease to be. Even the mountains we gaze upon will crumble to dust. To truly live we must yearn for that which does not die.
— David Gemmell, Shield of Thunder
How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm.... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting.... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow.... [M]y heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn't the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn't I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning?
— Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death
My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Beastly of him to die before you realized he might be fascinating.
— Tasha Alexander, And Only to Deceive
A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.
— Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesn't fire? It has to fire. Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock?
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
I could kill you a thousand times over Abraham, but we would never be even. You took everything I had.
— Christopher Buecheler, The Blood That Bonds
We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love
— Germaine de Staël
Immortality like this is about as useful as sunscreen on a submarine.
— Elizabeth Marx, All's Fair in Vanity's War
That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
It doesn't matter how much his mother loves him
—  love is not enough to keep any of us alive.
...In the end, there's no sort of difference between dying from ignorance and dying under the feet of thousands of men who have regained their freedom. You close your eyes, and then there's nothing anymore. And death is never difficult. It requires neither a hero nor a slave. It eats what it's served.
— Philippe Claudel, Brodeck
Everything worthwhile ends. We are in the perpetual process now: creation, maturation, cessation.
— John Logan, Red
Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.
— Philip Larkin
Could I tell them I was sorry their loved one was dead, when he’d tried to kill me? There was no rule of etiquette for this; even my grandmother would have been stymied.
— Charlaine Harris, Dead as a Doornail
ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing -GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord?HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Man," he said, "I'm not afraid of graveyards. The dead are just, you know, people who wanted the same things you and I want.""What do we want?" I asked blurrily."Aw, man, you know," he said. "We just want, well, the same things these people wanted.""What was that?"He shrugged. "To live, I guess," he said.
— Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World
There are only two things worse then an empty canvas: death and taxes.
— Ragnar Tørnquist
Death is the force that will create your new life. It is a mechanism of transformation. Welcome it.
— Lisa Cach, Wake Unto Me
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb.And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?
— Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.
— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Bod shrugged. "So?" he said. "It's only death. I mean, all of my best friends are dead.
— Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
Now every mortal has painand sweat is constant,but if there is anything dearer than being alive,it's dark to me.We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth--we call it life. We know no other.The underworld's a blankand all the rest just fantasy.
— Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
Of all the things I've ever done, perhaps none was more difficult than turning away from my beautiful girl and walking away, leaving her there, never to look back. But my friend Tom, my ever-faithful good friend Tom said, pointing down the hall away from Cec's room, 'Life's that way. Let's go home.'And so we did.
— Jim Beaver, Life's That Way
That was it. Shogo stopped breathing. The dim yellow light falling from the ceiling of the pilothouse shone on his pale face. He seemed at ease."Shogo!" Shuya yelled. He still had more to say. "You'll see Keiko! You'll be happy with her! You're--"It was too late. Shogo couldn't hear anything anymore. But his face just looked so damned peaceful."Damn it." Shuya's lips trembled along with his words. "Damn it."Holding Shogo's hands, Noriko was crying.Shuya also put his hand on Shogo's thick hand. A thought occured to him. He searched through Shogo's pockets and found the red bird call. He pressed it into Shogo's right hand and closed his hands over it so he could hold it. Shuya then finally burst into tears.
— Koushun Takami, Battle Royale
I've developed into quite a swan. I'm one of those people that will probably look better and better as I get older - until I drop dead of beauty.
— Rufus Wainwright
…She kissed me on my thin lips and all my words were pushed back into my mouth. “I don’t want to die,” she whispered, “but I need to lose the shackles of this multitude of hearts.
— Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle
I have no fear of the dead. Indeed in my own limited experience I have found them to produce in me a feeling that is quite the opposite of fear. A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories. I’d had the good fortune of seeing several of them in my time.
— Alan Bradley, A Red Herring Without Mustard
La vida es mi tortura y la muerte será mi descanso.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The young open the paper to forget about life by reading the funny strips. The old do it to forget about death by reading other people's obits. My advice: don't open the paper and go on with your life.
— Gabriel Bá, Daytripper
When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death  And when winter is at last over. . .can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us  In the dark don't we know  And when we are paralyzed by nightmares  We know what you are.  With our first cries we rail against you.  We see you in every drop of blood in every tear.
— Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death
Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground & The Gambler
The sharp knife of a short life, wellI've had, just enough time.
— Kimberly Perry
You smile upon your friend to-day,To-day his ills are over;You hearken to the lover's say,And happy is the lover.'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never:I shall have lived a little whileBefore I die for ever.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
That's it then. This is how it ends. I haven't even read Proust.
— James Turner, Rex Libris Volume Two: Book Of Monsters
..the nuclear family from across the street, which, as a result of decay, truly did have 2.5 kids;
— Robin Becker, Brains: A Zombie Memoir
We can't be sad for her," she murmured. "Only for ourselves at having to say good-bye.
— Dorothy Love, Beyond All Measure
Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust.
— John Green
Nobody is ready for death. If you ask Joe Blow on the street, he aint gonna tell you he thinks he'll live forever. But when the end is near you'll realize you've been believing that all along. It's like getting caught with your pants down. That's why you gotta live, little one. Yeah stop and smell them roses.
— Cristina García, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox