Quotes About Death

The American way of life, as I see it, is really the American way of death. Everything is determined by greed and the insatiable desire to be the richest and most powerful. And that desire is limitless.

Because I don't understand what would be someone's motives to want to go into space, where you're possibly going to die, and to try to meet an entity that may or may not be benevolent or want to kill you.

In the later era, people living in safety purchased with other people's lives could loftily dismiss bridges as "meaningless," when in warfare the control of bridges can be a matter of life and death for armies and for the fate of whole nations.

Only the dead know Brooklyn.

Could I make tongue say more than tongue could utter! Could I make brain grasp more than brain could think! Could I weave into immortal denseness some small brede of words, pluck out of sunken depths the roots of living, some hundred thousand magic words that were as great as all my hunger, and hurl the sum of all my living out upon three hundred pages—then death could take my life, for I had lived it ere he took it: I had slain hunger, beaten death!

out of death, life, out of the coarse rank earth, a flower.

It seemed cruelly unfair to me, even then, how fast your life can change before you have an opportunity to rethink your choices. We should get second chances on the big stuff. We should come equipped with erasers attached to the tops of our heads. Like pencils. We should be able to flip over and scribble away mistakes, at least once or twice during the duration of our existence, especially in matters of life and death.

Can a heart break, once it's stopped beating?

Cabeza de melón Había un niño taciturno, de hombre y melón un injerto. Tenía el ánimo nocturno por desear tanto estar muerto. Pero hay que tener cuidado con lo que se desea. Pues él acabó en jalea tras un pisotón bien dado.

Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side…. Die, and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. —RUMI

God challenged death to a duel, and death chose a cross as its weapon. God fired back with an empty grave. He defeated death when He walked out of its grip into the light of a beautiful Sunday morning. For those who trust in this truth, its eternally Sunday. That's why we can respond to the shadows of death that cross our path with the words of David: I will fear no evil (Psalm 23:4).

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.

How crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead

Once someone's dead you can't make them undead.

She'd say amazing things sometimes. Once you're alive, she'd say, you cant ever be dead.

I learned that words make a difference. It's easier to cope with a kicked bucked than a corpse; if it isn't human, it doesn't matter much if it's dead.

You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.

Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted or believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.

They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lives mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself.

Once you're alive, you can't ever be dead.

Proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life.

Kiowa who saw it happen said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something-Just Boom-then down. Not like in the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle-not like that. Kiowa said. The bastard just flat fuck fell. Boom down. Nothing else.

You learn, finally, that you'll die, and so you try to hang on to your own life, that gentle, naive kid you used to be, but then after a while the sentiment takes over, and the sadness, because you know for a fact that you can't ever bring any of it back again. You just can't.

The days seemed to stretch out toward infinity, blank and humid, without purpose, and at night I was kept awake by the endless drone of mosquitoes and helicopters. (Why wars must be contested under such conditions I shall never understand. Is not death sufficient?)