Death Quotes

Think of the great poetry, the music and dance and ritual that spring forth from our aspiring to a life beyond death. Maybe these things are justification enough for our hopes and dreams, although I wouldn't say that to a dying man.

~ Don Delillo

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?---On death

~ John Keats

... as we travel again between life and death, Waking and dream, blinking, while layers within layers,None better, none worse, unravel and knit up before us . . .

~ Jay Woodman

Death had touched her, hurt her, and left her to deal with its disagreeable aftermath.

~ Zoe Forward

He leaned up and nipped at her shoulder before reaching around to tease her nipples. Talin. Aye, love? I need you. He didn't have to be told twice.

~ Donna Grant

Where she ended, he began.

~ Donna Grant

For Death's life to be extinguished... now that was something to truly dread.

~ Donna Grant

The Light Fae. As a race, they were supposed to be all about good and decency, but there wasn’t a shred of either emotion within the walls of Usaeil’s castle.Neve observed Talin examining everything around him – from the castle, the Fae walking outside, the trees, and even the sky. His pale silver eyes missed nothing. She wondered what he saw, and how he catalogued things.His long, black hair had the barest hint of a wave to it as it hung to the shoulders of his pale blue shirt. He shoved one side behind an ear and tilted his head as if listening.She didn’t think he realized she was still beside him, not that she minded. It gave her a chance to fill her gaze with his sharply chiseled features.The hard planes of his jaw and chin were in direct contrast to his wide lips and thick eyelashes. It was difficult to look at Talin and notice anything but those beautiful eyes.Except when she did look down, she saw a body that made her hands itch to touch him. His shirt barely contained wide shoulders that tapered to narrow hips where navy pants encased his legs. Every muscle was honed and defined.As eye-catching as Talin’s personal package was, it didn’t hold a candle to what drew her interest – his bearing. The way he stood, walked, talked.In a castle full of Light who believed themselves above others, the only one who had the attitude and demeanor to carry it off was Talin.

~ Donna Grant

Warm lips met her shoulder where he placed a light kiss. Doona be afraid of me. I'll always protect you. Kinsey moved back against him, allowing her shoulder to rub against his bare chest. Heat radiated from him, cocooning her in everything Ryder.

~ Donna Grant

Dark Fae are evil. They do evil things to each other, but there is an unspoken rule that you never harm family. She held him tighter, wishing she could take away his pain with a hug. Families hurt each other all the time.

~ Donna Grant

Kyran stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “You’re needed, River. It’s not by accident that you know what you do about the Fae and were put in our path. You’re destined to aid us in this.”When she didn’t respond, he tried again. “Think of all the innocents, like your family and Jordyn’s, who were killed. You have a chance to help us put an end to such things for everyone. The half-Fae will no longer need to fear for their lives. And I promise you I’ll figure out who has hunted your family and end it.”Her resigned look cut through him. “You can’t do that. You work for Death. I doubt you’ll be given leave to help me.”“Let me deal with that. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to find out why the Dark are hunting your family. And then I’m going to make sure it never happens again.”River swung her gaze to him. She tucked a long length of hair behind her ear. “Do I have your word you’ll stop whoever is after me?”“Aye.” Kyran held out his hand.River stared at it a moment before she leaned up and took it. They shook, her small hand in his. “Then I’ll help you.

~ Donna Grant

Kyran was a Dark Fae, but that's not what she saw when she loo9ked at him. She saw a man who was devoted to his friends and his cause. She saw a man who was haunted by his past. She saw a man who made her think of the future.

~ Donna Grant

Death chose each of us - both Dark and Light - for a reason. There can't be Light without Dark or Dark without Light.

~ Donna Grant

He rose up and looked down at her. If I'd known you were out there, I would've begun searching for you thousands of years ago. Her smile was soft and glorious. That was the perfect response. It's the truth.

~ Donna Grant

No one will bother us now. She touched his lips with her finger. I think I'll scream if they do. Oh, you'll be screaming. That I promise you.

~ Donna Grant

His head lowered so that his cheek softly brushed against hers. With his mouth near her ear, he whispered, I can't keep my hands from you.

~ Donna Grant

I now can say I no longer fear death. Instead welcome it with open arms…

~ A.r. Von

I am an old man, and I am dying...Will you remember me, Jacob?I promise, one day, I will join you, Mr. Gold.Mr. Gold's laughter sounded like a trumpet and brought light to the corners of the room.

~ Noah Benshea

perhaps you know that Ingeborg Bachmann poemfrom the last years of her life that beginsI lose my screamsdear Antigone,I take it as the task of the translatorto forbid that you should ever lose your screams

~ Anne Carson

How did I picture the life after the grave? I fairly bawled out at him: A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That's all I want of it.

~ Albert Camus

In years past, a person died, and eventually all those with memories of him or her also died, bringing about the complete erasure of that person's existence. Just as the human body returned to dust, mingling with atoms of the natural world, a person's existence would return to nothingness.How very clean.Now, as if in belated punishment for the invention of writing, any message once posted on the Internet was immortal. Words as numerous as the dust of the earth would linger forever in their millions and trillions and quadrillions and beyond.

~ Minae Mizumura

How do you like your blue-eyed boy Mr Death?

~ E.e. Cummings

We realize, though, because we must, that remembrance is finite. It crosses only so many generations before it fades to indistinction. One man remembers his father and perhaps his grandfather and the details of the lives that were lived. But it's harder to see further back in time. I know the name of my great-grandfather, but our living time did not intersect. We did not walk the earth at the same time. Thus, to me he's a photograph; a story I heard my grandfather tell. He's not a life I remember. And my children may not know him at all, unless by chance they can find him in a book. In time, he will be forgotten entirely, just as we all will with enough revolutions of the earth around the slowly expiring sun. Each fragile heart now beating will one day stop ... We are little more than one tree's growth of leaves in hillside forest. We will enjoy our brief moment in the sun, only to fall away with all the other to make way for the next bright young generation.

~ Phillip Lewis

This seems to me absolutely one of the quintessential things about the human condition. It’s what actually distinguishes man from any other animal: living with those who have lived and the companionship of those who are no longer alive. Not necessarily the people that one knew personally, I mean the people perhaps whom one only knows by what they did, or what they left behind, this question of the company of the past, that’s what interests me, and archives are a kind of site in the sense of like an archaeological site.

~ John Berger

He felt his heart was going to explode, his body burned while his mind tried to reconstitute the ashes of who he once had been.

~ Jorge Silva Rodighiero

I want to know what's wrong with loving someone for life? Even when they're dead? What exactly is wrong with that? Why should I put him away, out of my mind? Like he's out of fashion. Does no one love for ever any more? Is no one built for the long road?

~ Josephine Hart

The graveyard is not the final resting place of our dear departed but an ephemeral repository of their remains. The real graveyard, however, is somewhere deep in our heart, where we can always visit them at any time of the day, talk about some unforgettable summers, or cry in solitude as if they were always there for us to stay. And should our twilight come, when we can no longer see the light of the day, some people dear to us will build a graveyard in their hearts. They will let us stay for a while or perhaps longer, as long as they continue to remember, but it does not matter anymore. What is comforting to know, no matter how tragic or tranquil our death may be, somewhere somehow someone will always build a sublime place for us to stay. (Danny Castillones Sillada, The Graveyard In Our Heart)

~ Danny Castillones Sillada

Life is like a clock, it goes round and round, until the battery dies. Unlike clocks when humans die, they are either dead for good or they are still alive in the minds of others. To live on after death one must make a name for himself, if one fails to make a name for himself, then he will die alone, and forgotten.

~ Satuin Segi

But the lost one is with you.Her tenderness strengthens you,Her gaiety uplifts you,Her honor purifies you.More than memory,The lost one is found.

~ Gail Carson Levine

Imagine being just strong enough to remember what life was like, feeling things, your heartbeat, the world around you. And imagine you couldn’t have it anymore, couldn’t even properly remember it, but there was just enough that some deep part of you knew what you were missing. Wouldn’t you do anything to get it back, if it was right there for the taking? Wouldn’t you be willing to kill for it?

~ Apollo Blake

Though Isobel could recall only a few specifics regrading the appearance of Poe's wife-a handful of vague characteristics picked up during her study with Varen, retained from the one or two glimpses she'd had for her portraits- Scrimshaw, it seemed, had forgotten nothing.

~ Kelly Creagh

Lacking natural equilibrium, I used writing as an illustrative means to center myself in a world filled with haziness and uncertainty. My self-drafted obituary will not bemoan death but shall celebrate life by giving heartfelt thanks for all the people that brightened actuality with their kindness, friendship, noble acts of charity, and expressions of universal goodwill. It was a privilege to exist in this wrinkle of time with many people devoted to burnishing the sharpen edges of life. The heavens blessed me with many years to discover why it is beautiful to live and die in a world where the hills and wind, the rivers and seas, stars and moon, and revealing sunlight shall persevere.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Life is a memory, then it is nothing. All law is writ in a seed.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

Most people are not really scared of death. They are merely terrified of being taken to a mortuary and/or being buried or cremated and/or being forgotten.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

O, never from the memory of my heartYour dear, paternal image shall depart,Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,Taught me how mortals are immortalized;How grateful am I for that patient careAll my life long my language shall declare.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There's a thine line between being a hero and being a memory.

~ Optimus Prime

Memory is all I have now

~ James Patterson

People have two deaths: the first at the end of their lives, when they go away, and the second at the end of the memory of their lives, when all who remember them are gone. Then a person quits the world completely.

~ Raghu Karnad

Do you think the memory of someone should dictate how we live going forward?' he asks, threading and unthreading his fingers together.'It depends,' I say. 'I think you can probably honor someone's memory, but you can't live for them, because that means living in the past.

~ Alexandra Bracken

She knew a thing she should have known all along: that dead people are like wax memory-you take them in your mind, you shape and squeeze them, push a bump here, stretch one out there, pull the body tall, shape and reshape, handle, sculp and finish a man-memory until he's all out of kilter.

~ Ray Bradbury