Quotes About Death

Abu-Jamal, serving a life-sentence now in the Pennsylvania prison, after over 29 years on death row, observes this about prison time: "Once loving relationships wither into yesterday's dust. Relatives die, their loss mourned in silent loneliness. Times, temperaments, mores change, and the caged move to outdated rhythms.

When the state is given absolute power, in this case to calculate and terminate the end of a human life, the state assumes a power that is "absolute," extending its domination to the borders of life and death. According to Meeropol, when people give that power to the state, they sacrifice their popular sovereignty. Executions function not to serve the people but as another mode of rule in today's theatrics of state terror. I

Whether considering action of the United States abroad or on its home front, I presume two closely related spheres of meaning for this notion of "terror." This word means to put in a state of fright (Latin terror, from terrere, "to frighten," "built on the root," tres-, "to tremble"). The mix of fear and trembling usually immobilizes, works severe injury, or creates lasting disintegration or death on targeted bodies.

But that's what nonfiction is, people. Shitty feelings and encounters with death.

The only serious debate in numbers terms is whether the death toll from coal is five hundred times worse than nuclear, or many thousands of times worse.

THAT IS NOT DEAD WHICH CAN ETERNAL LIE /AND WITH STRANGE AEONS, EVEN DEATH MAY LIVE AND LET DIE

It is true that the gods are dead, because of course we killed them. But their ghosts are still with us, and the anger of those ghosts is righteous and palpable and poetic.

If the choice on offer is between pasta primavera mix with freeze-dried chicken chunks and being among the first wave of deaths in the apocalypse, I hereby enthusiastically place my order for oblivion.

Wraiths see death in everything. They do not see things in the physical world as they appear, but as they someday will be. A person about to die might appear cadaverous, with hollow eyes and jaundiced skin; a car destined to crash will appear dented in advance. Much of the world seems decayed, a near collapse. Billboards are tattered, roads are potholed, pain is peeling, metal is rusting, buildings are crumpling. To the Restless, much of the world is already dead.

Alone, even in a crowd. Dead, but able to touch and sense the living. Real, but intangible.

Dying is the fastest route to fame for an aspiring rock star. The dead man's melodies become profound, acquiring mystery and rising into a realm beyond the reach of human criticism. In the stopping of a heartbeat, the rocker is transformed from decadent hedonist into misunderstood genius. Aye, death and musical stardom go together like Scotland and rain.

It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.

Death, like life, finds meaning in our connections to each other. Grief is bearable only because it can be shared.

After September 11, I wondered rhetorically midway through a column what we in the West are prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren't prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia - a Europe it would not be necessary to die for. But sometimes you die anyway.

The graves grow deeper. The dead are more dead each night. Under the elms and the rain of leaves, The graves grow deeper. The dark folds of the wind Cover the ground. The night is cold. The leaves are swept against the stones. The dead are more dead each night. A starless dark embraces them. Their faces dim. We cannot remember them Clearly enough. We never will.

It is a tragedy that your Anna died that way, but you had the right to survive. Every human has that basic, God-given right, Pino, and you feared for your life.

Working a man to death is the same as shooting a man to death," the priest said. "Just a different choice of weapons.

People are dying and you're playing music?" Several people came into the hallway behind his mother, including his aunt, uncle, and father. Michele said, "Music is how we survive such times, Pino.

people never learn this. They never realize that the Divine, the Almighty One, God, is listening to their hopes and dreams and trying to help. For good or for bad. Death or fields of clover. It is our choice." "Is it?

Deputy Inspector-General Atwal's body, riddled with bullets, lay in the main entrance to the Sikhs' most sacred shrine for more than two hours before the District Commissioner could persuade the Temple authorities to hand it over.

Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.

All say, "How hard it is that we have to die" - a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

It is human to exaggerate the merits of the dead.

By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!