c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
It was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to name just a few. Forget the scythe, Goddamn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a vacation. 
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.
— Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
She had always found villains more exciting than heroes. They had ambition, passion. They made the stories happen. Villains didn't fear death. No, they wrapped themselves in death like suits of armor! As she inhaled the school's graveyard smell, Agatha felt her blood rush. For like all villains, death didn't scare her. It made her feel alive.
— Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil
La tristesse durera toujours.]
— Vincent van Gogh
But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,If I am dead, as dead I well may be,You'll come and find the place where I am lying,And kneel and say Ave there for me,And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,For you will bend and tell me that you love me,And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me
— Frederick Weatherly
Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave bereft I am not there. I have not left.
— Mary Elizabeth Frye
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
— George S. McGovern
You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.
— Neil Gaiman, Fables and Reflections
Honor from death,” I snap, “is a myth. Invented by the war torn to make sense of the horrific. If we die, it will be so that others may live. Truly honorable death, the only honorable death, is one that enables life.
— Rae Carson, The Girl of Fire and Thorns
who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.
— Sylvia Plath
***HERE IS A SMALL FACT*** You are going to die.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
— Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart. 
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever.
— Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.Peel off the napkinO my enemy.Do I terrify?--The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?The sour breathWill vanish in a day.Soon, soon the fleshThe grave cave ate will beAt home on meAnd I a smiling woman.I am only thirty.And like the cat I have nine times to die.This is Number Three.What a trashTo annihilate each decade.What a million filaments.The peanut-crunching crowdShoves in to seeThem unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease.Gentlemen, ladiesThese are my handsMy knees.I may be skin and bone,Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.The first time it happened I was ten.It was an accident.The second time I meantTo last it out and not come back at all.I rocked shutAs a seashell.They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.DyingIs an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I've a call.It's easy enough to do it in a cell.It's easy enough to do it and stay put.It's the theatricalComeback in broad dayTo the same place, the same face, the same bruteAmused shout:'A miracle!'That knocks me out.There is a chargeFor the eyeing of my scars, there is a chargeFor the hearing of my heart--It really goes.And there is a charge, a very large chargeFor a word or a touchOr a bit of bloodOr a piece of my hair or my clothes.So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.I am your opus,I am your valuable,The pure gold babyThat melts to a shriek.I turn and burn.Do not think I underestimate your great concern.Ash, ash--You poke and stir.Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--A cake of soap, A wedding ring,A gold filling.Herr God, Herr LuciferBewareBeware.Out of the ashI rise with my red hairAnd I eat men like air.
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel
I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
— Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.Then the almost unnameable lust returns.Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention,the furniture you have placed under the sun.But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic.In this way, heavy and thoughtful,warmer than oil or water,I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.I did not think of my body at needle point.Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.Suicides have already betrayed the body.Still-born, they don't always die,but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweetthat even children would look on and smile.To thrust all that life under your tongue!—that, all by itself, becomes a passion.Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,and yet she waits for me, year after year,to so delicately undo an old wound,to empty my breath from its bad prison.Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,leaving the page of the book carelessly open,something unsaid, the phone off the hookand the love, whatever it was, an infection.
— Anne Sexton
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
— Fran Lebowitz
From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them, and that is eternity.
— Edvard Munch
My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
— H.L. Mencken
Draco, do it, or stand aside so one of us -" screeched the woman, but at that precise moment the door to the ramparts burst open once more and there stood Snape, his wand clutched in his hand as his black eyes swept the scene, from Dumbledore slumped against the wall, to the four Death Eaters, including the enraged werewolf, and Malfoy."We've got a problem, Snape," said the lumpy Amycus, whose eyes and wand were fixed alike upon Dumbledore, "the boy doesn't seem able -"But somebody else had spoken Snape's name, quite softly."Severus ..."The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape said nothing, but walked forwards and pushed Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face."Severus ... please ..."Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. "Avada Kedavra!
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.
— Don DeLillo, White Noise
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Harry, you wonderful boy, you brave, brave man.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS.
— Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero
The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them.
— Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling
Hazel has to realize that her mom was wrong when she said, “I won’t be a mother anymore.” The truth is, after Hazel dies (assuming she dies), her mom will still be her mom, just as my grandmother is still my grandmother even though she has died. As long as either person is still alive, that relationship survives. (It changes, but it survives.)
— John Green
Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
— J. Robert Oppenheimer
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men.
— George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.
— Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks
When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.We lived and died together.All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him -- a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you.
— Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
He Is Not DeadI cannot say, and I will not sayThat he is dead. He is just away.With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,He has wandered into an unknown landAnd left us dreaming how very fairIt needs must be, since he lingers there.And you—oh you, who the wildest yearnFor an old-time step, and the glad return,Think of him faring on, as dearIn the love of There as the love of Here.Think of him still as the same. I say,He is not dead—he is just away.
— James Whitcomb Riley
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
— Alyson Noel, Blue Moon
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Kill me, or you are a murderer.
— Franz Kafka
In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
— Carlos Castañeda, Journey to Ixtlan
It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.
— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings
Summertime is always the best of what might be.
— Charles Bowden
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time	 I have been half in love with easeful Death,	 Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,	 To take into the air my quiet breath;	 Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain,While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad	 In such an ecstasy!
— John Keats
Death is contagious
—  it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
But I don't know what to him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you.
— Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
I'm going to die whatever you do, but I'm not afraid.
— Erin Hunter, Rising Storm
Two turtle doves will show theeWhere my cold ashes lieAnd sadly murmuring tell theeHow in tears I did die
— Nikolai Gogol
Well I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.
— Robert Goolrick, The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life
I’ll never speak to God again.
— Sylvia Plath
Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.
— Meghan O'Rourke
The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The man who kills a man kills a man.The man who kills himself kills all men.As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
To escape death, she'd become death.
— Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight
People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.
— Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon't hear whenyour back isturned.
— Charles Bukowski, The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain: New Poems
We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
— Don DeLillo, White Noise
Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.
— Kevin Hearne, Hounded
We're standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you're asking me to marry you?""Perfect timing.
— J.D. Robb, Glory in Death
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
— Edgar Allan Poe
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure.
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Everyone sounded the same when they died.
— Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight
Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell.
— Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
— Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen
And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.Aaron’s Noise roars up in red and black.The current takes us on.“I’m sorry!” I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can’t barely breathe. “I’m sorry, Manchee!”?”“Manchee!” I scream.Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.“MANCHEE!”?”And Aaron wrenches his arms and there’s a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.And the pain is too much it’s too much it’s too much and my hands are on my head and I’m rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that’s inside of me.
— Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go
Believe me, when you die, it's everybody else's but your problem
— Cecelia Ahern, The Gift
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.
— Erich Segal, Love Story
Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?
— Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
I held her close for only a short time, but after she was gone, I'd see her smile on the face of a perfect stranger and I knew she would be there with me all the rest of my days.
— Brian Andreas, Strange Dreams: Collected Stories & Drawings
They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thin, incessantly: 'Get it done, get it done.' So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.
— Tom Robbins
When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.
— Neil Gaiman, Dream Country
About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
I think anyone who opened their heart enough to love without restraint and subsequently were devastated by loss knows that in that moment you are forever changed; a apart of you is no longer whole. Some will never again love with that level of abandon where life is perceived as innocent and the threat of loss seems implausible. Love and loss, therefore, are linked.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.
— Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.
— Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.
— Jim Carroll
If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.
— David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary
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.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
The only sin is the sin of being born
— Samuel Beckett
Chronic anxiety is a state more undesirable than any other, and we will try almost any maneuver to eliminate it. Modern man is living in anxious anticipation of destruction. Such anxiety can be easily eliminated by self-destruction. As a German saying puts it: 'Better an end with terror than a terror without end.
— Robert E. Neale, The Art of Dying
He felt his heart pounding fiercely in his chest. How strange that in his dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping him alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as he rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
They say even death can't cure an idiot.-Ririn
— Tite Kubo
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
— John Donne, Meditation XVII - Meditation 17
I died for beauty but was scarceAdjusted in the tomb,When one who died for truth was lainIn an adjoining room.He questioned softly why I failed?"For beauty," I replied."And I for truth, the two are one;We brethren are," he said.And so, as kinsmen met a night,We talked between the rooms,Until the moss had reached our lips,And covered up our names.
— Emily Dickinson
A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way-I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.)
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.''Why are you saying that?''She might need permission to die, Cal.''I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.
— Jenny Downham, Before I Die
Something has spoken to me in the night...and told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: "[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.
— Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
For this moment, this one moment, we are together. I press you to me. Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder. I sob, I sob.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..
— Laurie Faria Stolarz, White Is for Magic
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
— Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
I'm not blessed, or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do, and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes; in hospitals and forests and abbatoirs. For some folks death is a release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
— Neil Gaiman, Dream Country
When someone you love dies, you are given the gift of "second chances". Their eulogy is a reminder that the living can turn their lives around at any point. You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. You’re reminded that your feelings are not who you are, but how you felt at that moment. Your bad choices defined you yesterday, but they are not who you are today. Your future doesn’t have to travel the same path with the same people. You can start over. You don’t have to apologize to people that won’t listen. You don’t have to justify your feelings or actions, during a difficult time in your life. You don’t have to put up with people that are insecure and want you to fail. All you have to do is walk forward with a positive outlook, and trust that God has a plan that is greater than the sorrow you left behind. The people of quality that were meant to be in your life won’t need you to explain the beauty of your heart. They already understand what being human is----a roller coaster ride of emotions during rainstorms and sunshine, sprinkled with moments when you can almost reach the stars.
— Shannon L. Alder
Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken.
— Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of a Mother
When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.
— Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years.
— Cornelia Funke, Inkspell
No more let life divide what death can join together.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais
Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?""I guess it depends on how you die.
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.
— Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along. 
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
— Steven Wright
Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.
— Pablo Neruda
One to be a murderer. One to be a Martyr. One to be a Monarch. One to go Mad
— Marissa Meyer, Heartless
Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.
— Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World
I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us.
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us
— Jim Morrison
He cries. 'Please! I don't want to die.'I lean over. My hair smothers him.'Then you should never have been born,' I say.
— Christopher Pike, The Last Vampire
And Death spoke to them —’”“Sorry,” interjected Harry, “but Death spoke to them?”“It’s a fairy tale, Harry!”“Right, sorry. Go on.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.
— Juliet Marillier, Son of the Shadows
We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there.
— Warsan Shire
They never fail who die in a great cause.
— George Gordon Byron
Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise.
— Kim Harrison, Something Deadly This Way Comes
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I loveIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I meanBut I shall be good health to you nonethelessAnd filter and fibre your blood.
— Walt Whitman
I'm so sorry, Henri," I whisper in his ear. I close my eyes. "I love you. I wouldn't have missed a second of it, either. Not for anything," I whisper. "I'm going to take you back yet. Somehow I am going to get you back to Lorien. We always joked about it but you were my father, the best father I could have ever asked for. I'll never forget you, not for a minute for as long as I live. I love you, Henri. I always did.
— Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four
In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog’s master whispers in the dog’s ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog’s soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.I am ready.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
The death of dogma is the birth of morality.
— Immanuel Kant
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!
— Eugene O'Neill
We all didn't come into to the world at the same time so it makes sense that we don't leave it at the same time.
— Lurlene McDaniel, Too Young to Die
That's a nice song,' said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time. It's an old soldiers' song,' he said. Really, sarge? But it's about angels.' Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits. As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,’ he said. 'I've seen old men cry when they sing it,’ he added. Why? It sounds cheerful.' They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.
— Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they'd whispered, reminding each other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.
— Cassandra Clare
Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt
— Anne Rice
Would it hurt to die? All those times he had thought it was about to happen and escaped, he had never really thought of the thing itself: his will to live had always been so much stronger than his fear of death.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Jon Snow, is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?”“It is.” Jon took her hand.“Good,” she whispered. “I wanted t’ see one proper castle, before … before I …”“You’ll see hundred castles. The battle’s done. Maester Aemon will see to you. You’re kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we’ll get milk of the poppy for the pain.”She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.”“We’ll go back to the cave,” he said.” You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.”“Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
— Socrates
That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsumed with that which it was nourish'd by.This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets
Was there ever a war where only one side bled?
— George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
I died as a mineral and became a plant,I died as a plant and rose to animal,I died as an animal and I was Man.Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
— Jalaluddin Rumi
By daily dying, I have come to be.
— Theodore Roethke, The Collected Poems
We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Death is part of who we are. It guidesus. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end
— Christopher Paolini, Brisingr
Mad Eye' Moody on the Avada Kedavra curse: "Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no counter curse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
I thought of you and how you love this beauty,And walking up the long beach all aloneI heard the waves breaking in measured thunderAs you and I once heard their monotone.Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond meThe cold and sparkling silver of the sea --We two will pass through death and ages lengthenBefore you hear that sound again with me.
— Sara Teasdale
What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.
— David Levithan, Love Is the Higher Law
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
— Henry David Thoreau
Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.
— Carlos Castañeda, Journey to Ixtlan
Accepting death doesn't mean 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, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
A statue stands in a shaded placeAn angel girl with an upturned faceA name is written on a polished rockA broken heart that the world forgot
— Martina Mcbride
The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.
— Don DeLillo, White Noise
Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
— Ally Condie, Reached
And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl....
— Abigail Padgett, Blue
Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.
— R.A. Salvatore, The Legacy
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!
— John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra
Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?
— Laurell K. Hamilton, The Laughing Corpse
Aren't you afraid of dying?Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it.
— Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
No drowning man can know which dropOf water his last breath did stop
— Charles Sedley
Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
— Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.
— Sylvia Plath
I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.
— Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place
You know, lieutenant, you wear your weapon the way other women wear pearls.""It's not a fashion accessory.
— J.D. Robb, Naked in Death
The cries of the dead are terrible indeed
—  you should try not to hear them.
Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…
— Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.
— David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again:  Essays and Arguments
He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving. 
— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
Lord help my poor soul.
— Edgar Allan Poe
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.
— Plato, Apology
Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.
— Charlotte Perkins Gilman
When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice—twice—we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner—everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
We see a hearse; we think sorrow. We see a grave; we think despair. We hear of a death; we think of a loss. Not so in heaven. When heaven sees a breathless body, it sees the vacated cocoon & the liberated butterfly.
— Max Lucado, Max on Life: Answers and Insights to Your Most Important Questions
One dies only if he's not anymore in the hearts and minds of those who know him. - Monkey D. Luffy
— Eiichirō Oda
Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
Life isn't fair. A fair's a place where you eat corn dogs and ride the ferris wheel.
— Jennifer Brown, Hate List
I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.
— George Carlin
Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Undo it, take it back, make every day the previous one until I am returned to the day before the one that made you gone. Or set me on an airplane traveling west, crossing the date line again and again, losing this day, then that, until the day of loss still lies ahead, and you are here instead of sorrow.
— Nessa Rapoport
He would reach for me in the middle of the night, nearly every single night, wrapping one of those solid arms around my waist and pulling me in close. So. Close.
— Chelsie Shakespeare, The Pull
Amy [Winehouse] increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that YouTube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions, or death.
— Russell Brand
She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
— Neil Gaiman, Preludes & Nocturnes
How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?
— Gwenn Wright, The BlueStocking Girl
What will I be doing in twenty years' time? I'll be dead, darling! Are you crazy?
— Freddie Mercury