Quotes About Death

was learning that when you get close to death, you'll trade everything you own for one more day on earth.

Here's the strange thing about death. At a certain age it's always with you, lurking in the shade, pulling at your ankles, whispering in your ear when you pass a crypt. But it doesn't get your real attention until you find yourself alone at home and the wind swells inside the rooms and stresses the joists and lets you know what silence and solitude are all about.

Solitude and peace with oneself are probably the only preparation one has for death.

Edwin Arlington Robinson once wrote that God slays Himself with every leaf that flies. I think the same is true of us. I think we cannot understand ourselves until we understand that living is a form of dying. My generation was born during the Great Depression and, for good or bad, will probably be the last generation to remember traditional America. Our deaths may be inconsequential; the fling we had was not.

Mortality is not kind, and do not let anyone tell you it is.

Two kinds of cops eat their gun: the corrupt ones and the ones who let the dead lay claim upon the quick.

Maybe you'll have better luck dealing with the dead than I. They go where they want. They sit on your bed at night and stand behind you in the mirror. Once they locate you, they never rest. And you know what's worse about them?" He smiled at me and didn't reply. "When it's your time, they'll be your escorts, and they won't be delivering you to a very good place. The dead are not given to mercy.

How did a man know when it was his time? The answer is simple. There comes a moment when you no longer resist the inevitable and you accept the fact that billions have preceded you and that your death is not more important than theirs.

How did a man know when it was his time? The answer was simple. There comes a moment when you no longer resist the inevitable and you accept the fact that billions have preceded you and that your death is not more important than theirs.

I no longer care that my time on earth is coming to an end. What better way than in hot blood? Would you rather meet the grim reaper at Roncevaux or between bedsheets stiff with your own fluids?

You know what death smells like? Fish blood that someone has buried in a garden of night-blooming flowers. Or a field mortuary during the monsoon season in a tropical country right after the power generators have failed. Or the buckets that the sugar-worker whores used to pour into the rain ditches behind their cribs on Sunday morning. If that odor comes to you on the wind or in your sleep, you tend to take special notice of your next sunrise.

I do not mean to assault anyone's sensibilities, but once you face death or reach out and touch it with your hand, or look into the half-lidded eyes of a woman or child or man whose life has been violently taken, you bond with them and silently try to console them for the theft of their lives. You promise to carry them in your heart and never tell anyone about it. I think that's what humanity is about.

I suspect the peak of Roland's life was the morning in the year 778 when he rode up Roncevaux Pass with Charlemagne in the thin air of the Pyrenees and realized he had unknowingly gone through the metaphysical eye of the needle. He had entered immortality, and from that moment on, death could lay no claim on him.

For good or bad, my preoccupation with death and the past had defined much of my life, and a long time ago I had made my separate peace with the world and abandoned any claim on reason or normalcy or the golden mean. Waylon Jennings said it many years ago: I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane.

I didn't mind being alone. Solitude and peace with oneself are probably the only preparation one has for death.

As William Shakespeare said in Henry IV, "we owe God a death and let it go which way it will he that dies this year is quit for the next.

So the madness in war was an area that was sacrosanct, not even to be recognized, and there was no correlation between that and the death of your best friends because of corporate stupidity.

One, for instance, boasted a lovingly detailed watercolour of a dead robin, while on another a row of comical frogs paraded beneath umbrellas and, on another still, insects danced in a circle, wielding musical instruments and seemingly drunk.

Already the galaxy had been shaped by the birth of one, and henceforth would be reshaped by the death of the other. But had the change been felt and recognized elsewhere? Were his sworn enemies aware that the Force had shifted irrevocably? Would it be enough to rouse them from self-righteousness? He hoped not. For now the work of vengeance could begin in earnest.

Wilhuff had had ample time to grow accustomed to the sight, scent, and taste of blood, but he had never seen so much human blood spilled in one place.

Teem showed him a bitter smile. "Perhaps you had no direct hand in Kim's death, but I suspect that you were complicit." He paused, then added, "That little speech you gave in the Senate … I understand that it succeeded in attracting the attention of the Supreme Chancellor. Clearly you have all the makings of a career politician. Unfortunately, we plan to cut your career short.

As I say, they don't teach it at the academy, but you learn it on the job: not every man's death is a crime.

The water, the surf, the colors on the shore. You think they make the beauty of the tropical sea, aye, lad? They do not. 'Tis the knowledge of what lurks below the surface of it, that awful-looking thing, as you call it, that carries death with every move that it makes. So it is, so it is with all beauty.

Walter, the time has come. What do you mean, Phyllis? For me to meet my bridegroom. The only one I ever loved. One night I'll drop off the stern of the ship. Then, little by little I'll feel his icy fingers creeping into my heart. ...I'll give you away. What? I mean: I'll go with you.