The autumn leaf falls faster than the trees grow faster. (La feuille d’automne descend plus vite – Que les arbres ne grandissent plus vite.)

I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I’m not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.

The universal pervasion of ugliness, hideous landscapes, vile noises, foul language…everything. Unnatural, broken, blasted; the distortion of the dead, whose unburiable bodies sit outside the dug outs all day, all night, the most execrable sights...

You can’t escape an assasin,” He leaned forward, shadows swallowing his eyes. “Hangings, bumbling bureaucrats, dishonest crewman, jail – those you can talk your way out of, you try hard enough. But this kind of...

Casy said solemnly, “This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life an’ just died out of it. I don’t know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter much. He was alive, an’...

The secrets of evolution are death and time—the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations.

Everyone knows that part of the spirit descends to the afterworld, while part of it remains with the family, but we have a special belief about the spirit of a young woman who has died...

And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Meddey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death.

I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what...

It may seem to you that your life is over now. Your future without the person you love is no future at all.Death is a head-on collision with your plans.But everything in life–the gold fillings...

I used to be one, until my wife died. And then I was just pathetic.

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It’s one of the oldest urges in mankind. It’s a way of stalling death.

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so...

How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, ‘I am at peace with God.’ She smiled, but not at me. Poi...

My mother used to say that rain here pours like a blessing, like a thick veil that parts to reveal the bride’s face. But nearly every day, when this rain parted, it revealed a long...

If birth is a manifestation of life, death is another.

I know inside that there is more to life than this mortal coil. It’s a very shallow minded person who thinks that someone is born and dies and that’s it. I haven’t gone through thirty...

And all the while one spirit uttered this,The other one did weep so, that, for pity,I swooned away as if I had been dying,And fell, even as a dead body falls.

A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.

This is what youth must figure out:Girls, love, and living.The having, the not having,The spending and giving,And the meloncholy time of not knowing.This is what age must learn about:The ABC of dying.The going, yet not...

I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn’t seem fair that we only...

The noise increased and came from all directions. There was no amount of reason to negotiate the void between sound and movement.

The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king – conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is...

All I can tell you is that at the end, there’s nothing left but love.

He is dead and I, the self serving coward that I am, still live. Life is not fair. There is no pattern. People die at random. Something everyone knows, but no one truly believes. They...

A man of your valor deserves not another breath.

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother–her incomparable mother!–five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am,...

I was six years old when my mother died. For a long time afterward, the sweet and earthy magnolia scent of her would permeate my dreams. No matter what I was dreaming about, good or...

Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is.

Everything we know and believe about deity and divinity nowadays, is a direct origin of old civilizations. Everybody, Greeks, Saxons, Assyrians and Soumerians, all imitate the ancient ways of the first tribes of central Africa...

Loftus grew up with a cold father who taught her nothing about love but everything about angles. A mathematician, he showed her the beauty of the triangle’s strong tip, the circumference of the circle, the...

I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s not that very inevitability that inspires us to take photographs and...

The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone.

Harry, you wonderful boy, you brave, brave man.

We’re reaching for death on the end of a candle We’re trying for something that’s already found us

If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur Jermyn did; and Arthur Jermyn soaked himself in oil and set first to his clothing one night.

Lay downYour tired & weary head my friend.We have wept too longNight is fallingAnd you we are only sleepingWe have come to this journey’s endIt’s time for us to goTo meet our friendsWho beckon usTo...

I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and...

We must learn to accept ourselves in the painful experiment of living. We must embrace the spiritual adventure of becoming human, moving through the many stages that lie between birth and death.

With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time...

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.

Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.

The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.

If suddenly you do not exist,if suddenly you no longer live,I shall live on.I do not dare,I do not dare to write it,if you die.I shall live on.For where a man has no voice,there, my...

No, you should never choose death, but it chooses you. Sometimes you know it’s coming, like my mother, and sometimes it takes you by surprise, like my friend Ariel’s uncle who got killed in a...

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle. She died young.

Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all.

One last mystery: on one of the little ponds, this morning, I saw wind riffling the first of the waterlily leaves. They haven’t all emerged yet, but new circles tattoo the water, here and there,...

All this talk about what a marvelous future science’ll bring us? Art can change things just as much.’ She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Maybe better.”Why’s that?’ ‘Art doesn’t kill anyone.