It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.

I — I alone know how to mourn for him as he deserves.’ But while we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful desolation came upon her face that I perceived she was...

I put her burnt bones into my mouth and swallowed them whole.

I felt like the sky around me was closing me in. Trapping me in some sort of bubble where time stands still and grief would linger on forever.

Thirteen of us ate supper, and then one of us died. Unfortunately, he did not rise from the dead to pay his dinner bill. And he wasn’t the only one to skip out without paying,...

The pig was soon dissected and its blood filled the bucket in the bottom of which a patch of sky was reflected darkly. It had surrendered to the vortex of life and his breathing.

Aside from those few times I’ve killed a man, I’m not a violent person.

For the first time (but how long will it take us to acknowledge this?) in the history of ideas, a philosopher had dedicated a whole book to the question of atheism. He professed it, demonstrated...

You and I have a connection that nothing, not on heaven or earth, or even hell, could ever break. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. I’ll hear you…

I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.

I’d be willing to walk around wearing clothes from the 1930s, telling everyone I am a time traveler. You’ve got to do more than dig if you want to earn the love of a dead...

In so many senseless deaths, beauty is to blame.

I learned a little of beauty – enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth – and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition...

It’s not that people don’t know when they’ll die. It’s that they don’t seem to know they’ll die.

Even in the grave, all is not lost.

The only satisfactory thing about death is that our knowledge about it is unsatisfactory.

The back door of every tomb opens on a hilltop.

It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine,...

May you find the strength and resolve today, to allow a deeper sense of healing to begin.

Love is not love that wounded bleeds And bleeding sullies slow. Come death within my hands and I Unto my love will go.

Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.

Death is but another stage of life. However long one suffers from illness or however severe the injury, death can happen only when Time signals the right moment.

What an odd creature you are, Bernard, with your constant fear of death! Do you never have a feeling, as I do, of utter futility? No? Doesn’t it occur to you that the sort of...

Are you saying that he deserves to die?’ I asked, chilled. ‘We all deserve to die,’ he answered.

Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away like chips and cry- Men with tired eyes realize it now, and wait to deform...

How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike.

Get away from my house and all its rooms that echo, all the rooms I don’t enter anymore.

Elle était morte avec cette joie tragique des cœurs jaloux qui entraînent l’être aimé dans leur mort, et qui disent : personne ne l’aura !

On the morning of November 22nd, a Friday, it became clear the gap between living and dying was closing. Realizing that Aldous [Huxley] might not survive the day, Laura [Huxley’s wife] sent a telegram to...

A society coming apart at top and bottom, or passing over into another form, contains just as many possibilities for revelation as a society running along smoothly in its own rut. The individual is thrust...

Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d...

Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person’s life its true meaning.

Perhaps you should speak more softly to me, then. Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kings seem to be dying like flies.

We are not going to change the whole world, but we can change ourselves and feel free as birds. We can be serene even in the midst of calamities and, by our serenity, make others...

I’d fought alongside them in that battle, but up close, when they stood quietly watching us, they looked as beautiful as they looked unreal. The angels weren’t supposed to feel emotion, but they were weeping....

There is no place so dark that light cannot lead the way.

You can, for just a moment, fuse grief like a bone, but the memory of the ability to bend lingers inside, like an itch running in the blood, just beneath the skin: relief is always...

Copulation is no more foul to me than death is.

I move closer to the glass, as close as I can get to it, begging her, begging Lily, begging Grace, begging all of them to tell me what’s left, to just tell me, while the...

Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember...

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.

One is ejected into the world like a dirty little mummy; the roads are slippery with blood and no one knows why it should be so. Each one is traveling his own way and, though...

One false step, and you’ll fall all the way to Tartarus—and believe me, unlike the Doors of Death, this would be a one-way trip, a very hard fall! I will not have you dying before...

…the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but...

People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn’t. It continues and is ever-changing.

The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae,...

Let no man be called happy before his death. Till then, he is not happy, only lucky.

You are as the yellow leaf.The messengers of death are at hand.You are to travel far away.What will you take with you?You are the lampTo lighten the way.Then hurry, hurry.When your light shinesWithout impurity or...

Our kind, we don’t leave many traces behind in this world.