You’re Hell’s Angels, then? What chapter are you from?”REVELATIONS. CHAPTER SIX.

Growing up, I always had a soldier mentality. As a kid I wanted to be a soldier, a fighter pilot, a covert agent, professions that require a great deal of bravery and risk and putting...

The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving...

I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of stomach cancer. I decided that nobody should suffer that much.

I was dead, and I hadn’t even been able to attend my own funeral.

In good truth he had started in London with some vague idea that as his life in it would not be of long continuance, the pace at which he elected to travel would be of...

…and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don’t mean much to anyone except to the one who can’t take any of them along.

I once saw many flowers blooming Upon my way, in indolence I scorned to pick them in my going And passed in proud indifference.Now, when my grave is dug, they taunt me; Now, when I’m...

Is anyone who’s supposed to be dead actually dead?

If you just found out you had six months left to live, the first thing I’d do is apologize for not delivering the letter 182 days ago, when your doctor first handed it to me...

…There is some firm place in me which knows that what happened to Wally, whatever it was, whatever it is that death is as it transliterates us, moving us out of this life into what...

I once placed third in the Battle of the Fourth Places. There were only two other competitors, so I felt proud. My grandma and grandpa beat me, despite having been dead over five years.

{On the death of Hale’s esteemed friend and fellow scientist, Luther Burbank. Burbank was much beloved by the population unil in an interview he revealed that he was an atheist. After this, the public turned...

But could words bethe end of me?

I carried [Rudy] softly through the broken street…with him I tried a little harder [at comforting]. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse...

On their deathbed men will speak true, they say.

Summer came.For the book thief, everything was going nicely.For me, the sky was the color of Jews.When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had...

Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die.

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their...

The ‘Elves’ are ‘immortal’, at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death.

Maybe she’d seen too many Japanese horror movies, and maybe it was just a tingle of warning from generations of superstitious ancestors, but suddenly she knew that what Alyssa wanted was not to be saved,...

I got him a cool gift. I got him a pack of razors, and a really furry dead cat.

He would have died soon, but more painfully. Anyway, it was Urban Bloodshed Limitation. First rule: limit bloodshed by making sure that none of your own gets spilled.

With six pieces of wood, I’m building a life, and my coffin.

Why should I be sad? Everyone has to die. If you have a body, it’s too late to cry. It’s only funerals I can’t stand.

Here too was the terrifying fixed curve of the infinite, the creeping curve of logic which at least must become the final signpost at the edge of nothing. After that – the deluge. The great...

It is poor solace to speak of the passing of time and grief,” the master said. His quiet voice had gone somehow bleak, though Araene could not decide where in his unchanging tone the difference...

If flowers were boogers, I’d pick a few big ones and flick them on your grave.

The only truth of life is that he will be dead one day and before that day come, he should make the maximum out of his life; no karma will postpone his death.

I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as...

The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is...

The girl I used to love is no longer a girl, and this saddens me more than our separation. It puts my own mortality vividly on display, in contrast to my eternally youthful memories.

She’d known it her whole life. It was the one thing she was certain of. That someday, everyone she loved would die. Everything she loved would crumble to ruin. It was the price of life....

When thinking about yesterday, contrasted with today, I can’t help but observe that today by definition means I’m one day closer to death. I just hope that one day isn’t tomorrow.

Most of [the alchemists] were poor; many all but unknown in their own time, many died and saw no fruit of their labours… Of some the very names are forgotten. But though their names be...

I was crying on the inside, but on the outside, to the casual observer, and to the man who was dying, I was laughing. That man was my father, and I haven’t laughed that hard...

In life we are separated by boundaries political, cultural, ethical, linguistical and psychical. But in death we are all united, for all afterlife is similarly unknown

A fish called Gilbert. But I just call him Gil to save some breath, so I can spend more time underwater petting him like I used to do to grandpa before he drowned.

No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a...

Well, keep them away from me.

There’s no better way for a woman to punish a man than to make him sleep away from her.

The kind of death you should mourn over is the one that happen when you abort your potentials prematurely! Life without purpose is a tragedy!

His eyes were like two wafers of slate, grey and lifeless.

Am I afraid to die? I am every time I let myself be seduced by the noisy voices of my world telling me that my “little life” is all I have and advising me to...

But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to...

Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)

Bullying is an attack upon the runts of the litter – the weak of the species, and it is predicated on a lack of bond with the parents. If a child has a secure bond...

Thy soul shall find itself alone ’Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone—Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then...

In some ways it does, but it’s a bit like running a long race with a rock in your shoe. You get used to it, but it always hurts a little.

For Christmas I got new socks. I peeled them off a dead body.