c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
They say that a near death experience makes a person see a flash of their past, but that hasn't happened to me at all.
— Anthony Otero, Hanging Upside Down
​It is not enough to write and deliver a funeral service for a grieving family…you must love them too.
— Caroline Louise Whittle
waiting for the time to be free ...i ask every die forgeting sometimes soon i will be free for ever ... dont hurry the death.
— mel rojas
If I could control tomorrow's haze,The darkened shore wouldn't bother me,If I can't control the web we weave,My life will be lost in the fallen leaves...
— David Bowie
Without warning, David was visited by an exact vision of death: a long hole in the ground, no wider than your body, down which you are drawn while the white faces above recede. You try to reach them but your arms are pinned. Shovels put dirt into your face. There you will be forever, in an upright position, blind and silent, and in time no one will remember you, and you will never be called by any angel. As strata of rock shift, your fingers elongate, and your teeth are distended sideways in a great underground grimace indistinguishable from a strip of chalk. And the earth tumbles on, and the sun expires, and unaltering darkness reigns where once there were stars.
— John Updike, Olinger Stories
Death, it turns out, is the mother of all conflicts.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, One Rainy Day in May
All things end. They rarely end as we would like them to and often do so before we are ready. We transition in a way that gives our loss honor; we grieve with a love and true appreciation for what we have no longer. It was clear that my mom was ready to go; it was her time. My love of her and my desperation to keep her in my life were of no consequence to that fact, any more than my relentless attempts to improve The Lyon's Den kept it from cancellation. Both personally and professionally I was swamped with the message: Your plan pales compared to the larger one.
— Rob Lowe, Love Life
[Mayor Dana] I don't know a lot of things. I do know there will always be problems for Night Vale. There are so many. Usually they pass. Often they kill many people, but what are people but deaths that haven't happened yet? [Jackie] Births that already happened?
— joseph fink, jeffrey cranor
Tis only when faced with our own mortality that we truly realize what it means to be alive,
— Timothy Strother
Death is just one more Path. One you'll come to in time.
— Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass
Deep inside of us we all know there is someone we were meant to be.
— David Kessler
Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?
— Aldous Huxley
To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Jason smiled. The sound of wings was louder now, the fluttering of angels come to carry him home.
— Robert Ferrigno, Prayers for the Assassin
By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence.
— Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
Death is not the end of one`s life rather than the beginning of another ( bad or nice) life.
— nagmalbaher
A candle without a spark, a sky without a sun, the look people get when they cease to be people, start being bodies.
— Sarah Raasch
Childbirth is nothing. Death is mighty. The 0 to our 1. There is nothing in the world like it. But there is nothing in it that is not like the world.
— Marion Coutts, The Iceberg
Maybe someone who dies at the age of a hundred doesn't feel anything more than the fear that grips us when we're six and it's nighttime and our mother comes in to turn out the light.
— Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation
The casket was lined with lovely velvet, which must have felt lovely even to the dead, but the glowing man continued to rip up the casket.
— Brad McKinniss, Beast Machine
Death is our friend, precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Obviously the raven with the unquenchable itch was at it again, playing tricks on the world and its creatures. Once by air, he thought, and now by water.
— Mordecai Richler, Solomon Gursky Was Here
It is better to die honorably and render yourself immortal than live to old age and fade to dust.
— Livia Blackburne, Daughter of Dusk
Perhaps, in a few people, I have seen what can be described as a struggle with death, and it can be distressing to behold. But for the vast majority of people death is gentle, tender.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
We die a day at a time
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Verily, there is no dishonor in death at the hands of a far superior enemy.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Life and death is a matter of destiny, just like day and night is the law of the universe. Chuang Tzu
— Sung Yee Poon, FREE EASY MIND in Conflicts. Stress.Loss
Human life is precious.’ ‘And human death is sacred. Or at least it should be – and would be, if we allowed it to be. In the short experience I have had, sitting with the dying, I can say that the last few hours are always peaceful, almost spiritual. Wouldn’t you call that a sacred time?
— Jennifer Worth
This StoneHe went looking for a roadthat doesn't lead to death.He went looking for that roadand found it.It was a stone road.He walked that roadthat doesn't lead to death.He walked on it awhilebefore he stopped,having turned to stone.Now he stands there on that roadthat doesn't lead to deathnot going anywhere.He can't dance.from his eyes stones fall.The rainbow people pass himcrossing that road, long-legged, light-stepping,going from the Four Housesto the dancing in the Five Houses.They pick up his tears.This stone is a tearfrom his eye, this stonegiven me on the mountainby one who died before my birth,this stone, this stone.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Coming Home
In the natural course of events, the period when death is taking over a body is fairly brief. My grandfather (who had no medication) had about a fortnight of this period in his life. Today it can drag on for months or years.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
The dying need only a hand to hold and a quiet in which to make their departure.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
To be present at the time of death can be one of the most important moments in life. To see those last, awesome minutes of transition from life into death can only be described as a spiritual experience. And then afterwards, when the body lies still, one gets the strange feeling that the person has simply gone away, as though he has said, ‘I’m just going into the other room. I’ll leave that thing there while I’m gone; I won’t be needing it.’ It’s a very odd experience – the body is there, but the person has gone. No one would say, ‘I am a body’; we say, ‘I have a body’. So what, therefore, is the ‘I’? The ‘I’ or perhaps ‘me’ has just stepped into the other room. It is a strange feeling, and I can’t describe it in any other way. Another thing that is strange is that the body left behind looks smaller, quite a lot smaller, than the living person. The face looks the same, but calm and relaxed, wrinkles and worry lines are smoothed, and a feeling of serenity pervades the entire room. But the person, the ‘I’, has gone. It also greatly helps the process of mourning to see the body after death, and preferably to assist in the laying out. Nurses used to do the job when I was young girl, and we always asked the relatives if they wanted to help. Nurses don’t do it any more, but anyone can ask.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
Handling a dead body is not a repugnant or frightening experience and, somehow, it helps to accept the fact that the soul of that person has gone if you treat the body with reverence and respect before it is finally disposed of by cremation or burial.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
It is well nigh impossible to talk to anyone about death, I find. Most people seem deeply embarrassed. It is like when I was a girl and nobody could talk about sex. We all did it, but nobody talked about it! We have now grown out of that silly taboo, and we must grow out of our inhibitions surrounding death. They have arisen largely because so few people see death any more, even though it is quite obviously in our midst. A cultural change must come, a new atmosphere of freedom, which will only happen if we open our closed minds.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
There is not a single dying human being who does not yearn for love, touch, understanding, and whose heart does not break from the withdrawal of those who should be drawing near.
— Jennifer Worth, In the Midst of Life
My thoughts are with you all. Forever conscious of the vast, absurd universe and writing my eternal story I shall remain dead, but dreaming.
— A.P. Sweet, dead, but dreaming
In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did?
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
An African who loses the ability to die with dignity is a lost man.
— Henning Mankell
I believe that the world is dying, not just me. And fantasy will save no one. The deathly unreality of Utopia, the merchandizing of Utopia is wicked, deadly reality.
— Harold Brodkey, This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death
If you’ve never been close to death, life probably seems pretty solid. The truth is, it can be destroyed in an instant, like a photograph. One moment your world is slick and shiny. But then the Universe crumples everything into a ball. And even if you don’t get crushed, if you fight to straighten things out, your life will never be the same again.
— Paula Stokes, Girl Against the Universe
Welcome to Irkalla, the Land of the Dead,” the woman said. “I am Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld.
— Alan Kinross, Longinus The Vampire: Babylon
And do you know the story about Haydn’s head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Einstein Story? He’d carefully written his will with instructions to cremate him. They followed his orders, but his disciple, ever loyal and devoted, refused to live without the master’s gaze on him. Before the cremation, he took the eyes of the cadaver and put them in a bottle of alcohol to keep them watching him until the moment he should die himself. That’s why I said that the crematory fire is the only way our bodies can escape them. It’s the only absolute death. And I don’t want any other. Jean-Marc, I want an absolute death.
— Milan Kundera, Identity
As young one we learned life is a opportunity and when we grow older we learned something more precious death is a gift
— Dondy Subingsubing
Death peeked around corners; it winked at her in the mirror then vanished; it hummed along with the radio and then faded away. It wheedled into her mind and her words, leaving a humid vapor around her heart and a thick fuzzy taste on her tongue.
— Brandy Heineman, Whispers in the Branches
Some deaths were long, the decay so gradual the rotted end was nothing more than a sigh disappearing in the wind.Others were quick, the abrupt cut of a life in mid-phrase leaving unanswered questions lingering like an unresolved harmony.
— Emma Raveling, Breaking Measures
it is sad to fill a grave with a person full of potential yet completely emptied of anymore possibility to try it once again.
— Johnnie Dent Jr.
Death is the great incorruptible corruptor
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
[Charlie is dying:]After what seemed a long while, but hadn’t been, Marsh gave Paulette’s hand a warm and caring squeeze. “They’re here for him,” she said.But their heavenly visitors didn’t take him right away. They had to make room for the chaos of modern medical urgencies. To get out of the way of well-trained professionals who had dedicated their lives to holding back Heaven.Choppers are just as noisy and turbulent as we imagine them to be. One tore in over the hills and shattered every bit of peace Charlie otherwise could have lost himself into.In an instant the Med-Evac team was all over him. In the midst of that blatant orchestrated chaos Paulette fought to find her peace, and to hold him inside it.“Hang on, buddy,” techs kept telling him. “Don’t go leaving us now. You just hang in there.”But they didn’t understand, Paulette thought. It was his time.The chopper made a horrible racket carrying him off. Marsh, Paulette, and Ailana held their peace as its winds whipped their world into a froth.Harve’s face twisted with something that might conceivably have been rage.Then, all of a sudden, the birds sang, as though someone had given them a cue. “So that’s what it’s like,” Marsha said, very softly.“The afterlife.“My God, it’s so beautiful.
— Edward Fahey, The Gardens of Ailana
Life is an endless circle within God. From before birth to beyond the transition called death, I am filled with life. My soul wears this earth garment I call my body, which I cherish and care for. When I finally lay it down, my soul continues to live, always in God’s care and keeping.
— Daily Word, Healing Thoughts
I've adopted the guideline of Warren Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, who says "I wanna know where I'll be when I die - so I never go there.
— Tom Brokaw
When I die (body) please lay me on stage just as I am. Do not put on makeup and jewelries on me as I repented from doing them when alive. Lay me as I am, so family and friends will see how worthless this body is without the Spirit . Deceive no one with my body on my funeral day. If i do it not when alive, DO IT NOT WHEN AM NOT IN THIS BODY. THIS WORLD IS NOT MY HOME.
— Mary Tornyenyor
Thus spake brave Horatius, the captain of the gate. To all men upon this Earth, death cometh soon or late. And what better way to die, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of ones' fathers, and the temples of ones' G/Ds? For the tender mother, who dandled him to rest. And for the wife, who nurses his baby at her breast. And for the holy maidens, who feed the eternal flame. To save them from false sextus, that wrought the deed of shame. Lay down the bridge, Sir Consul, with all the speed ye may. I, with two more at either side, shall hold the foe in play. In Yon straight path a thousand may well be stop by three. Now who will stand on either hand and hold the bridge with me?
— Thomas Babington Macaulay
I don't want to die, Buddy.' She put her head on his chest. 'I know this cancer probably won't kill me. But I think about dying all the time. I dream about it. What do you think? Do I get to see Pat on the other side, or do I just lie there in the dirt forever?'...Buddy wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. 'I think dead is dead,' he said softly, near her ear. 'But that's not so bad. I think of it as following. Following the rest of them...My mother and father. Your sister. Your mom. But not just them. All of them. All of us. People...Maybe it's just a way to feel less lonesome about the whole thing, but I think of dying as a path we all go down separately at first, but eventually, together.
— Anita Diamant, Good Harbor
No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.
— Socrates, Apology
Top question of the dying: "What made me sick?
— Steven Magee
They say you fly when you die.Basically, when you die, your spirit leaves your body. Actually, at first you can see all your life, like, reflected in a magic mirror. Then you start floating like a ghost. You can see anything happening around you, you can hear everything, but you can’t communicate with the world of the living.Then you see these lights, all these different lights, of all different colors. These lights are the doors that pull you into other planes of existence, but most people actually like this world so much that they don’t want to be taken away… So the whole thing turns into a bad trip and the only way out is to get reincarnated.It’s funny you know, DMT only lasts for six minutes but it really seems like eternity. It’s the same chemical that your brain receives when you die. It’s a little bit like, dying would be the ultimate trip.
— Gaspar Noé
Have you ever taken yourself a bit too seriously, thinking that who you are is actually defined by what you look like, how much talent you have (or don't have), how well known you are (or aren't), or how much money you have (or don't have)? Those are all "garments and labels" you wear during the course of your stay here on this planet, but it's not who you are. At the end of the day, when it's all said and done, you will turn all of that back in just like a car you had on lease.
— Dennis Merritt Jones, The Art of Being: 101 Ways to Practice Purpose in Your Life
If nothing else, they died fast and they were warm. The boy from the plane, I thought. The one with the teddy bear. Where was Rudy's confort? Where was someone to alleviate this robbery of his life? Who was there to soothe him as life's rug was snatched from under his sleeping feet?
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Everyone dies. That is a universal constant. The only variable is how one dies.
— Chris de Pavilly, Troubleshooters The Assassins Trilogy
I have no interest in dying.But I have to. I have to care one day about things that don't matter to me.
— Noah Cicero, The Human War
If this is death, if we are dead or dying or even if we are living and just going to die, then what do we have to fear? What are we worried about? I think the knowledge of death is freeing. That pressure we feel, the weight of life and its impending conclusion, is imaginary. And the fact that we’re all in this together is unifying: there’s solidarity in mortality.
— Chuck Palahniuk
Charlie started crying, in the convulsive, soundless way that men do. "Don't you understand," he said after composing himself, "that's a funeral dirge for the first wave." We all thought about that, the many lives lost before we even opened our eyes this morning.
— Suzanne Hayes, I'll Be Seeing You
A girl about her own age reached out and took hold of her hand. The girl was tall and thin. She had long black hair streaked with red, and the whites of her green eyes stood out against the black coal dust that covered her face. Her blue and white dress hung in tatters, and was blackened by coal dust and smeared with blood. The girl smiled and Rosie could see that in her other hand she was holding her red umbrella.
— Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella
Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not, Nor greatly care. - Shoot. Shoot!Of all deaths, the violent death is best;For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast,The pain, once apprehended, is quite past.
— John Webster, The White Devil
While death is sadly inevitable, our grief will soon pass like a swallowed penny through one’s bowels.Painful change just takes time.
— Jessica Watts, Frank N' Goat: A Tale of Freakish Friendship
When my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil. And I will not demand the exact spot, but let it be within this country Horace and I have spent the years roaming contentedly.
— Kazuo Ishiguro
More are men's ends marked than their lives before.The setting sun, the music at the close,As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
— William Shakespeare
Love doesn’t die with death. Love is like liquid; when it pours out, it seeps into others’ lives. Love changes form and shape. Love gets into everything. Death doesn’t conquer all; love does. Love wins every single time. Love wins by lasting through death. Love wins by loving more, loving again, loving without fear.
— Kate   O'Neill
Dave learned that Death is the opposite of peace: it’s struggle, it’s ugly, it’s horrific, it’s dirty. And ultimately, Death is emptiness.
— Emily Bleeker, Wreckage
Like I said, Kenzie. Everything ends. I’m not afraid to die,” you say with a wan smile. “I just hope I’m smart enough to stay dead.
— Victoria Schwab, The Archived
Is this what it's like? he wondered. When you're about to die? One hand stretched back to someone who cares for you, the other reaching for a place you can't see.
— Rich Shapero, Too Far
It's not that people don't know when they'll die. It's that they don't seem to know they'll die.
— Raheel Farooq
The dead teach this great lesson, which we are loathe to learn: we too will die.
— John Updike
He’d seen a lot of bizarre items left at gravesides, like a carton of eggs, a pair of reading glasses, a bag of licorice, smooth stones, a spoon.
— Sheri Webber, Dawn Rising
Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.
— Jane Austen, Emma
Death brings out the beauty in life.
— Samantha Diaz
But when I am due…Keep local the chest to lay rest my simple skins in,
— Mpho Leteng
The stony silence of death, trapped by the original gravity of our sins,and the perpetuity of a long, leisurely yawn, a world where blood and bone no longer matter.
— Brian D'Ambrosio, Fresh Oil and Loose Gravel: Road Poetry by Brian D'Ambrosio 1998-2008
The Piper is coming nearer," he said, "he is nearer than he was that evening I saw him before. His long, shadowy cloak is blowing around him. He pipes - he pipes - and we must follow - Jem and Carl and Jerry and I - round and round the world. Listen - listen - can't you hear his wild music?
— L.M. Montgomery, Rainbow Valley
And what after all, is death?? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life; 'tis but the finishing of an appointed course; the refreshing inn after a fatiguing journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the beginning of a life of immortal happiness.
— Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady
The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep.
— Alan Bradley, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust
There are moments in our lives that define the people we will become in the future, like a symptom before an ailment, or the catalyst before the cure.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
He had defended himself against death from without, and then it had carried him off from within.
— Hans Keilson
The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
Popularity is like a girl in class that you can't ignore. She give you eyes when no one looks then turns to her friends and laughs some more.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear
— Roger Ebert
I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
Character isn't something you talk about
—  it's something you show through your actions-through your every day habits.
Society gets by from the help of its citizens.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
I guess what's most important is that we chose to live with our hearts open and to let our experiences show us the way towards our brightest days.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you’re young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is—it’s all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
What were we, but kids with apartments and jobs anyway?
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
Kiernan told me-" Tears I hadn't even felt coming on suddenly began streaming down my cheeks. I had to swallow a sob before I could continue. "He told me he was sorry for-for loving me. He was s-sorry because," a deep breath helped me regain some of my waning control, "he didn't want to hut me. His biggest fear was the pain he'd cause those he cared about after he was gone. But I think we can all agree that knowing Kiernan for even a single day was worth a lifetime of grief
— Jamie Canosa, Pieces of My Heart
Christopher was wearing a suit and adorned make-up. As long as I had known him, he never wore a suit or make-up. The look of him defenseless to his appearance saddened me.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
The central question of any execution: do you want the hood on or off? Would you rather see it coming? Or would you rather simply drift away, cocooned in warm darkness, stinking of nothing but yourself? A kind, familiar place to hide in, just before the snap, the crackle? Or the pop?
— Gemma Files, We Will All Go Down Together
It’s funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you’ve always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else.
— Brian   Joyce, The B-Side Diaries
It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don’t mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will catch fire and plummet from the sky. But rational interaction, that ends with you realizing that you will survive the worst, whatever the worst may be. Accepting death doesn’t mean that you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all.
— Caitlin Doughty
We all die alone. We shall endure death as once we endured birth. You can’t share either experience.
— P.D. James, The Children of Men
The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead.
— P.D. James, The Children of Men
To die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.
— John Green, Paper Towns
Only the dead, can speak about their world.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The earth is expertly designed to take back what it has created. Bodies left for carrion in enclosed, regulated spaces could be the answer to the environmental problems of burial and cremation. There is no limit to where our engagement with death can take us.
— Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
It's only young people who make giant, life-altering decisions based on what other people might think, and it's because they don't see their own death looming. Their fear is, "Will my family, friends and lovers admire me?" whereas an older person's fear is that vision of themselves lying in a hospital bed, a breathing tube up their nose and the thought running through their heads, "Why didn't I at least try to do what I wanted to do, while I had the chance?
— Patricia V. Davis
Death occurs in unexpected times.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
I feel like a little tug in a great storm. But I'm fastened to a great ship on ahead. It's going into port and can't lose its way.
— Patricia St. John, An Ordinary Woman's Extraordinary Faith
Each man is master of his own death and all that we can do when the time comes is to help him die without fear of pain.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Die in a good way, obviously.
— Mindy Kaling
I am not afraid of death. When I have to confront the great reaper, I would like to recall Bernanos' words- 'And now , just the two of us!'.
— Jean mercure
character isn’t something you talk about
—  it’s something you show through your actions—through your every day habits.
Sullivan had her Crucifix Soldier and now I have mine. No. I am the soldier. Teacup is the cross.
— Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea
I will simply die, as you will simply die, when our hearts stop beating. And instead of the fires of Hell or the clouds of Heaven, there will be a chorus of hungry worms or fish, depending on how we go. Isn’t that what really terrifies you most of all, why you force yourself against all reason to believe in such tales? It’s because you’re afraid of the nothingness at the end. You’re ashamed of it.
— Cliff James, Of Bodies Changed
I waited for the Earth to stop spinning, for the rift to open and swallow us. Yet the ash tree remained framed in the window, refused to fall. Rain streaked the glass. Blood throbbed in my ears. Preternatural silence. The cruellest April.I was not deceived. What I saw was samsara, illusion. The world had ended. I was sure of it.
— John Dolan, A Poison Tree
After all, Malthus was wrong. Marx was wrong. Democracy did not die during the Great Depression as the Communists predicted. And Khrushchev did not 'bury' us. We buried him. Neville Chute's On the Beach proved as fanciful as Dr. Strangelove and Seven Days in May. Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb never exploded. It fizzled. The Clash of 79 produced Ronald Reagan and an era of good feelings. The Club of Rome notwithstanding, we did not run out of oil. The world did not end at the close of the second millennium, as some prophesied and others hoped. Who predicted the disappearance of the Soviet Empire? Is it not possible that today's most populous nations -China, India, and Indonesia- could break into pieces as well? Why do predictions of the Death of the West not belong on the same shelf as the predictions of 'nuclear winter' and 'global warming'? Answer: the Death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen, it is a depiction of what is happening now. First World nations are dying.
— Pat Buchanan
They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion.
— Ambrose Bierce, An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Things in Arizona don’t just die
—  they bake and fry in the heat until there is nothing left.
Seventy years of life is nothing in front of a single day of death
— Munia Khan
O, treacherous Death! You can't be forgiven for vanquishing my creator to the dust.
— Mallika Tripathi
She died in my arms saying, “I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we could never have war anymore.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
O, treacherous Death! You can't be forgiven for vanquishing my creator to the dust...
— Mallika Tripathi
I had a very funny and depressing talk with my seventy-four-year-old mother. I decided, she doesn't have a bucket list - she has a kick-the-bucket list.
— Lori Lesko
Dreaming's shit, but dying's worse; and watching someone die, that comes somewhere between the two, I guess. It ain't good, but it's got to be better than the other thing, better than doing it yourself. Hasn't it?
— Chaz Brenchley, Dead Of Light
Amid all that blood of the dying sun, the verde was still alive.
— Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince
A shade flickered to my left, an eerie shadow balanced even more precariously on the railing than I. Her plimsolls struggled to grip the same rail my fingers now held. I knew her face, just as I knew her death; I’d watched it often enough, those times I’d been unable to avoid crossing here. Nerys was always here, tied to the moment of her death, an echo, forever hurtling down into those waters, only to reappear an instant later, once more wavering on the rails.
— Hazel Butler, Chasing Azrael
But she left him. That night the angels came back for her, like she'd asked them to. And nobody who saw the heartbreak on Grandpa's face when Granny breathed her last would have thought for one minute that he was glad to get shet of her . . . .
— Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree
Death is a misery.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Death. It's around more than people realize. Because no one wants to talk about it or hear about it. It's too sad. Too painful. Too hard. The list of reasons is endless.
— Jessica Sorensen, Nova and Quinton: No Regrets
We never actively remember death,' Odenigbo said. The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
But he drank a lot. When love dies, he told me, there are no survivors.
— Eion Colfer
Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it... It's horrible... I shall see nothing more... nothing of what exists... the smallest objects that we use... glasses... plates... beds where people sleep so comfortably... carriages. It's so lovely, going out in a carriage, in the evening... How much I enjoyed all that!
— Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami
Don't worry," he would say, smiling. "Dying is much more difficult than one imagines.
— Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
They say that when a man is going to drown, when he finally gives up the struggle - it's sort of blissful, for a moment. And then he drowns.
— John Hodge, Collaborators
Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you. What are you afraid of? Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret?
— C.S. Lewis, The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950 - 1963
How people die remains in the memory of those who live on.
— Cicely Saunders
If death is necessity life is a choice
— Yasser Hakeem
And the camel driver had said, to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one's departure from this world.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
We defy augury. There is special providence inthe fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not tocome, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—thereadiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is'tto leave betimes, let be. (Hamlet 5.2.217-224)
— William Shakespeare
When you are about to die a montage of your family and friends fast forwards until your mind flashes quickly to the person you love and what you last said to them. If it was loving, you die in peace. Life was and always will be about love.
— Maria Dorfner
The moment of orgasm is like the first dramatic moment of birth when you draw breath and scream out that you are alive. It is hard to imagine the moment when you fade back into the vacuum and draw your last breath.
— Chloe Thurlow, The Secret Life of Girls
I'd love to live forever except the person that made this game board has a tendency to occasionally knock some pieces off
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
(I didn’t tell him that thediagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)
— John Green
He thrashed like a freshly caught fish as the sucking sounds of draining water gurgled from the pooling blood in his mouth.
— Michiko Katsu, Burdened By Guilt
We walk on the ground and give sparse recognition to the mud that will be the eternal homes for the bodies that we praise so much. Ground might not worth much but it holds billions of history and some of humanity's greatest treasures, One day it will become our permanent home. Maybe we should begin a mud religion and give reverence to the dirt, in the end, it is the dirt, ground and Mother Earth that wins and reigns supreme throughout the centuries.
— Crystal Evans
Death isn't a tragedy to God, only to those left behind.
— Patricia Briggs, Night Broken
The only thing that can break the unbreakable is the unthinkable. I knew the moment I saw them alone in the waiting room that my worst fears were confirmed. They were all dead.I turned around and walked out. I didn't want to be there. I had to go outside. I couldn't breathe. When I reached the grass across from the parking lot, I fell to my knees. I didn't cry. Instead, I became physically ill. Over and over, my stomach repelling the truth that I refused to believe. When there was nothing left in me, I fell backward onto the grass and stared up at the sky, the stars staring back at me. Millions of stars staring back at the whole world. A world where parents die and brothers die and nothing stops to respect that fact. The whole universe just goes and goes as if nothing has happened, even when one person's entire life is forced to a complete halt.
— Colleen Hoover, This Girl
I wish that death had spared me until your library had been complete.
— Lorenzo de' Medici
Some bridges you crossed on your own, no matter who drove you to the edge.
— J.R. Ward, Dark Lover
Dying may just be the best thing that ever happened to me.
— J. Lincoln Fenn, Poe
Everyone's dying, Milcah. Some people are just dying sooner than others.
— K.K. Hendin, Only The Good Die Young
Dying in vain isn't really all that bad since nearly everyone does it. It's the living in vain you really have to watch out for.
— Ross Thomas, Briarpatch
Achala, worrying and scheming about your next life, before you have even completed this one, is not a good practice." Rinpoche
— Daniel Prokop, Taking It with You
Death descended like a theatrical storm over the Drakensberg Mountains, stranding me while it ran its course.
— B.G. Bowers, Death and Life
Death is most terrifying to those who have yet to live.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
If you are not dead, then there is hope. get up and go conquer the world.
— Fenley Douglas
As for dying we can only assay that once
—  we are all apprentices when it comes to that
The scariest thing about death is not dying, it's the uncertainty of what happens after
— Peyton J Glenn
We are, as we die, who we most were in life...
— Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper
Two conclusions follow, die a death, live a death.
— Aporva Kala, Life... Love... Kumbh...
There are so many ways to exit towards the Light, but with my luck, I'd be the one electrocuted by Diwali lights. Or the one who cracks her head falling off a footstool. I'd still be a jester, leaving the audience with a stitch in their sides.
— Amruta Patil, Kari
Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star
—  one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.
And a funeral, I found out, is like a wedding in reverse, with less time to plan.
— J. Lincoln Fenn, Poe
Two weeks. Everything you love, own, and cherish, can be gone, liquidated, and lost forever in two weeks. Give or take a day.
— J. Lincoln Fenn, Poe
If you had one last breath - what would you say?If you had one hour to use your limbs before you would lose the use of them forever - would you sit there on the coach?If you knew that you wouldn't see tomorrow who would you make amends with?If you knew you had only an hour left on this earth - what would be so pressing that you just had to do it, say it, or see it?Well there is something that I can guarantee - that one day you will have one day, one hour and one breath left.Just make sure that before that day that you have said, done and experienced everything that you dream of doing now.Do it now - that is what today is for.So pick up the phone and call an old friend that you have fallen out of touch with.Get out and run a mile and use your body and sweat.Seek out someone in your life to say your sorry to. Seek someone In your life that you need to thank. Seek someone in your life that you need to express your feelings of love to.Then when that day comes you will be ok with it all.
— JohnA Passaro
Caterpillar dun' become butterfly-caterpillar die so butterfly can be. A new thing. We all must let ourselves die to be what we will be. But we cling to what we know.
— Ryan Winfield, The Park Service
I'm fine with death. I've dealt out more than my share. It's the act of dyin' that bothers me.
— Mike Kalmbach, The Caldarian Conflict
Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Opium makes you quick-witted - perhaps only because it calms the nerves and stills the emotions. Nothing, not even death, seems so important.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Differences disappear when faced with death.
— Shannon A. Thompson, 2013: A Stellar Collection
Mama wasn't dead...exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free.
— Shannon Celebi
But why was the room suddenly becoming so dark? It was the middle of the afternoon. With a supreme effort Giuseppe Corte, who felt himself paralyzed with a strange lethargy, looked at the clock on the nightstand beside the bed. It was 3:30. He turned his head in the other direction and saw that the shutters, in obedience to some mysterious command, were closing slowly, blocking the passage of light.
— Dino Buzzati, Sessanta racconti
I will not go back. No bad thing for me to die. I will make it happen so that it happens only once.
— Shahrukh Husain, A Restless Wind
Even the reeking dark in the lion's cage seemed precious and infinitely preferable to whatever lay beyond. She would go out like the flame of a candle. Where does the candle flame go when the candle is blown out?She laid her painted face against the iron bars and bared her teeth at death.
— Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses
One Must Choose Among Both Parties Either To Be A Wise Man That Die To Live In Righteousness And Blissfulness For Eternity Or Be A Foolish Man That Lives To Die For Vanity.
— Baba Tunde Ojo-Olubiyo
I die with the dying light, yet shine brighter as the darkness approaches. Soon I’ll be whittled to bone and stripped clean through, nothing left but a skeleton on which to hang a hat. But have no fear, I look good in hats.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
This world rubs me raw, scours me smooth like an SOS pad put to a grease-caked skillet. And pain: it stabs and scrapes and pulls me back to earth, my final B&B, that worm-spun cot of cool black sod.
— Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations
Not how he died, not what he died of, even less why he died, are of concern, to me, only the fact that he did die, he is dead, is important: the loss to me, to us
— B.S. Johnson
t nightfall, atthe oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes roseout of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirredthe certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Let it all go, one foot in the grave and one bag packed. We shall go to our end in the warm glow of the past, burning up the memories, all the clutter given back.
— Peter R. Pouncey, Rules for Old Men Waiting
To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.
— Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel
It's all a waste of time. Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything.
— Janne Teller, Nothing
If something's worth getting upset about, then there must be something worth getting happy about. And if something's worth getting happy about, then there must be something that matters. But there isnt!.. In a few years you'll all be dead and forgotten and diddly-squat, nothing, so you might just as well start getting used to it!
— Janne Teller, Nothing
Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.
— James A. Michener, Centennial
And then the sword came down like a flash of lightning, and then her head was off her body and the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over.
— Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl
Chip, she’s gone,” and he said, “I thought I’d feel her looking down on us, but you’re right. She’s just gone
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Did not we vow that we would neither of us be either before or after the other even in travelling the last journey of life? And can you find it in your heart to leave me now?
— Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Do you really think anyone needs some kind of notarized statement saying 	'Dear Saint Peter, here's another stiff, pass him through the gates, signed, Father McGonnigill.'...'PS: He once had a hot dog on a Friday, but don't hold that against him.' 
— P.N. Elrod
Old age is catching up with me, or am I catching up with it?
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
Nature had found the perfect place to hide the yellow fever virus. It seeded itself and grew in the blood, blooming yellow and running red.
— Molly Caldwell Crosby, The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History