Life was transparent, literature opaque. Life was open, literature a closed system. Life was composed of things, literature of words. Life was what it appeared to be: if you were afraid your plane would crash...

Fear manifested itself as a physical presence that seemed to dominate the public sphere. Time almost stopped. Even without confirmation I could sense that something had gone terribly wrong.

May you hear my feeble voice! It will tell you that here below there is a heart full of the memory of you.

J’écoutais mon cœur. Je ne pouvais imaginer que ce bruit qui m’accompagnait depuis si longtemps pût jamais cesser.

By the time men get to be of our age, Mr. Vaiden, about all any new acquaintance can do is to remind them of somebody else. You know at times I have thought that is...

The living take a part of the dead with them, carrying them around in their minds, like a song that lingers after the music has been turned off.

comprehend death,” as if human beings understood what it means to die. Is death a prelude to reincarnation? A portal to Heaven or Hell? Complete extinction? Union with all life? Or something else? All of...

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

I think anyone who opened their heart enough to love without restraint and subsequently were devastated by loss knows that in that moment you are forever changed; a apart of you is no longer whole....

Priorities” There’s No Such Thing as “Busy

Death is ordinary. Behold it, subtract its patterns and lessons from those of the death that weapons bring, and maybe the residue will show what violence is.

I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.

MISUNDERSTANDING” arises only when you see the things with Closed Eyes

It happened. It was awful. You aren’t perfect. That’s all there is. Don’t confuse your grief with guilt.”We stay in the silence and the loneliness of the otherwise empty dormitory for a few more minutes,...

If death is no longer a fear, we’re really free. Free to take any risk under the sun for Christ and for love.

Life is short enough, there is nothing worth here to take your life, and those things we do gain can never be taken to our grave.

OH, THERE HAS TO BE SOMETHING IN THE STOCKING THAT MAKES A NOISE, said Death. OTHERWISE, WHAT IS 4:30 A.M. FOR?

Still others reflected on how quickly the food could be snatched from a man’s table, or the child from a woman’s breast, or the wife from a man’s bedcloset, that no strength of grasp could...

No matter what I accomplish, it doesn’t seem like much compared to surviving Auschwitz.

When I arrived at the house in the suburbs that night I seriously contemplated suicide for the first time in my life. But as I thought about it, the idea became exceedingly tiresome, and I...

I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.

He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was...

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they’d ruined, got a little stale after a while.

A gangster must always be prepared to kill a friend. It is one of the many open secrets of the business, since it is the truest test of his ability to rule and command the...

Who is mightier than death? Those who can smile when death threatens.

But man by his nature is an unnatural animal. If any creature stands a chance of defeating death, it is man.

The first crime was mine: I committed it when I made man mortal. Once I had done that, what was left for you, poor human murderers, to do? To kill your victims? But they already...

Death alone gives meaning to life, and you will never fully live until you know you must die. And make your peace with that knowledge.

How can life end in the middle of the story? Because life always does.

I know what’s wrong with me – I could never stand still for death! Which you’ve got to do by a certain age, or be ridiculous – you’ve got to stand there nobly and serene,...

I don’t know where I am- somewhere between heaven and hell, a place of utter terror and endless confusion.

I believe that when death closes our eyes we shall awaken to a light, of which our sunlight is but the shadow.

Dead. Even in the silence of my mind I cannot think the word. I cannot acknowledge this most obvious and terrible of truths.

The day she was born,her grandfather made her a ring of silver and a polished stone, because he loved her already.

We’re all drowning, but don’t say it out loud.

She should have died on that day. Perhaps, in a way, she had.

Do you want to know something about tyrants? When faced with death, they weep and they beg just like the rest of us.

Xander, there are two certainties in life–death and truth. They will both pursue you to your grave. There is no escaping them. But we run from them anyway in hopes that somehow we can slip...

In her mind’s eye she saw it, saw it all at last: the rolling armies and the flames of battle; the graves and pits and dying cries of a hundred million souls; the spreading darkness,...

If we stay where we are, where we’re stuck, where we’re comfortable and safe, we die there… When nothing new can get in, that’s death.

There was no hope in death, only an end.

Tessa had lain down beside him and slid her arm beneath his head, and put her head on his chest,listening to the ever-weakening beat of his heart. And in the shadows they’d whispered, reminding each...

It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.

She was finally owned up- it took death as a price for her being accepted.

17.We live on this earth till we die one dayThough we crave to live, death doth make its swayNone can stop it, thou nor I from its wayNor tears of kith and kin keeps it...

And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than a gruesome foe.

It’s like Romeo & Juliet,’ I say. ‘You can’t separate them. Otherwise, there would be no Shakespeare.’ Silence. I decide to be more straightforward. I tell him, ‘Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not even...

in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck

When the time comes to die, make sure that all you have to do is die!

darkness falls upon Humanityand faces become terriblethingsthat wanted more than therewas.all our days are marked withunexpectedaffronts – somedisastrous, othersless sobut the process iswearing andcontinuous.attrition rules.most givewayleavingempty spaceswhere people shouldbe.and nowas we ready to self-destructthere is...