Quotes About Tragedy

Old Scratch,1 but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got

On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck—and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death by the visitation of God. What could the world do without juries?

And they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.

He, as much as anyone, knows who and why and what we are: A family of ramshackle tragedy. A comic book kapow of boys and blood and beasts.

Within minutes, mounds of concrete and earth were stacked and piled. The streets were ruptured veins. Blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were stuck there, like driftwood after the flood.

a young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow

The sky was murky and deep, like quicksand. There was a young man parcelled up in barbed wire, like a crown of thorns. I untangled him and carried him out. High above the earth, we sank together, to our knees. It was just another day, 1918.

A family of ramshackle tragedy. A comic book kapow of boys and blood and beasts. We were born for relics like these.

God, there were so many of them. So many sets of dying eyes and scuffing feet.

A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT *** ***ABOUT RUDY STEINER*** He didn't deserve to die the way he did.

Immediately. Her brother was next to her. He whispered for her to stop, but he, too, was dead, and not worth listening to. He died in a train. They buried him in the snow.

The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling.

Finally, in October 1945, a man with swampy eyes, feathers of hair, and a clean-shaven face walked into the shop. He approached the counter. "Is there someone here by the name of Liesel Meminger?" "Yes, she's in the back," said Alex. He was hopeful, but he wanted to be sure. "May I ask who is calling on her?" Liesel came out. They hugged and cried and fell to the floor.

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?

Still in disbelief, she started to dig. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be dead. He couldnt- Within seconds, snow was carved into her skin. Frozen blood was cracked across her hands. Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces. Each half was glowing, and beating under all that white.

He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Frau Diller's. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped.

They were going to Dachau, to cencentrate.

Liesel was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform. How could that woman walk? How could she move? That's the sort of thing I'll never know, or comprehend-what humans are capable of. Death-

Rudy, please, wake up. God damn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Rudy, come one, Jesse Owens, don't you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up...

Certainly, war meant dying, but it always shifted the ground beneath a person's feet when it was someone who had once lived and breathed in close proximity.

It kills me sometimes, how people die... -Told from the perspective of Death

a beautiful, tear-stomped girl,shaking the dead.

Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all this. I think work is the best. (Frida Kahlo, p. 157)

At the age of twenty, his artistic dreams frustrated, Hitler was a tramp: park benches, soup queues. Given just a little more talent, perhaps, he would have killed himself, not in the bunker, but in a cosy little studio in Klagenfurt.