Death Quotes

He Is Not DeadI cannot say, and I will not sayThat he is dead. He is just away.With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,He has wandered into an unknown landAnd left us dreaming how very fairIt needs must be, since he lingers there.And you—oh you, who the wildest yearnFor an old-time step, and the glad return,Think of him faring on, as dearIn the love of There as the love of Here.Think of him still as the same. I say,He is not dead—he is just away.

~ James Whitcomb Riley

You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.

~ Alyson Noel

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.

~ Oscar Wilde

Kill me, or you are a murderer.

~ Franz Kafka

In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.

~ Carlos Castañeda

It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.

~ Mitch Albom

True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Summertime is always the best of what might be.

~ Charles Bowden

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain,While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!

~ John Keats

But I don't know what to him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you.

~ Suzanne Collins

I'm going to die whatever you do, but I'm not afraid.

~ Erin Hunter

Well I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.

~ Cassandra Clare

I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.

~ Robert Goolrick

I’ll never speak to God again.

~ Sylvia Plath

Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.

~ Meghan O'rourke

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.

~ Sylvia Plath

The man who kills a man kills a man.The man who kills himself kills all men.As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.

~ G.k. Chesterton

My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done.This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the Branwell Brontë piece of information concerns writers and feeling like death and doing things to prove they can be done, all of which are pertinent to my current situation to a degree that is, frankly, spooky.

~ Douglas Adams

To escape death, she'd become death.

~ Sarah J. Maas

People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.

~ Banksy

Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.

~ J.d. Salinger

Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon't hear whenyour back isturned.

~ Charles Bukowski

We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.

~ John O'donohue

I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.

~ Don Delillo

Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.

~ Kevin Hearne

We're standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you're asking me to marry you?Perfect timing.

~ J.d. Robb

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, To die will be an awfully big adventure.

~ J.m. Barrie

Everyone sounded the same when they died.

~ Sarah J. Maas

Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell.

~ Anne Rice

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.Aaron’s Noise roars up in red and black.The current takes us on.“I’m sorry!” I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can’t barely breathe. “I’m sorry, Manchee!”?”“Manchee!” I scream.Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.“MANCHEE!”?”And Aaron wrenches his arms and there’s a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.And the pain is too much it’s too much it’s too much and my hands are on my head and I’m rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that’s inside of me.

~ Patrick Ness

Believe me, when you die, it's everybody else's but your problem

~ Cecelia Ahern

Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.

~ Erich Segal

Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?

~ Terry Pratchett

I held her close for only a short time, but after she was gone, I'd see her smile on the face of a perfect stranger and I knew she would be there with me all the rest of my days.

~ Brian Andreas

They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thin, incessantly: 'Get it done, get it done.' So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.

~ Markus Zusak

When the first living thing existed, I was there waiting. When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave.

~ Neil Gaiman

About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone.

~ Virginia Woolf