Death And Dying Quotes

“Life and death lived inside each other. That's what occured to me. Death was inside all of us, waiting for warmer nights, a compromised system, a beetle, as in the now dying black timber on the mountains.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“I remembered screaming then, screaming until my voice stopped.”
― Ivy Devlin, Low Red Moon

“Death was painful, not because people couldn't see their loved ones anymore, but because they couldn't communicate with them anymore.”
― Karen McQuestion, The Long Way Home

“I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later it will begin to disintegrate, and then I shall die, and die conclusively. How can we face such a fact, and not live in fear?”
― Jack Kerouac

“Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand.”
― Roman Payne

“With painstaking rumination, the tips of his fingers grazed over my neck, a deafening silence. I didn't move as his hand paused at the base of my throat. He listened to the arrhythmic beating of my heart, my pulse thumping beneath his fingers. He kissed me along my neckline and throat. I almost burst apart from the longing. My blood burned for him.”
― Rae Hachton

“We cry for ourselves, don't we? Not for the dead. The dead are past caring.”
― Clive Barker

“I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful.”
― Rae Hachton, Pretty In Black

“They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona's hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing he might do, or say, could. Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God's will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, The Tea Rose

“O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie


O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,
gimme a break before I die:
grant me wisdom, will, & wit,
purity, probity, pluck, & grit.
Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,
gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,
and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice—
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good—
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.”
― Philip Appleman

“Prepare to evacuate soul in ten, in nine, eight.
Chloe's splashing through the ankle-deep back-up of renal fluid from her failed kidneys.
Death will commence in five.
Five, four.
Around her, a parasitic life spray paints her heart.
Four, three.
Three, two.
Chloe climbs hand-over-hand up the curled lining of her own throat.
Death to commence in three, two.
Moonlight shines in through the open mout...
h.
Prepare for the last breath, now.
Evacuate.
Now.
Soul clear of body.
Death commences.
Now.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories.”
― Alan Bradley, A Red Herring Without Mustard

“GERTRUDE
Gertrude Appleman, 1901-1976

God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty.

--A Catechism of Christian Doctrine

I wish that all the people
who peddle God
could watch my mother die:
could see the skin and
gristle weighing only
seventy-nine, every stubborn
pound of flesh a small
death.

I wish the people who peddle God
could see her young,
lovely in gardens and
beautiful in kitchens, and could watch
the hand of God slowly
twisting her knees and fingers
till they gnarled and knotted, settling in
for thirty years of pain.

I wish the people who peddle God
could see the lightning
of His cancer stabbing
her, that small frame
tensing at every shock,
her sweet contralto scratchy with
the Lord’s infection: Philip,
I want to die.

I wish I had them gathered round,
those preachers, popes, rabbis,
imams, priests – every
pious shill on God’s payroll – and I
would pull the sheets from my mother’s brittle body,
and they would fall on their knees at her bedside
to be forgiven all their
faith.”
― Philip Appleman

“...Death," she said, as her hand dropped away, " is how you know you were alive in the first place.”
― Vicki Pettersson, The Taken

“Hamlet misspoke, Strawl decided. It is consciousness that makes cowards of us all, not conscience. Right and wrong are venomless when compared to the simple awareness of being alive. The knowledge that existence can equal something past the sum of our circulation and digestion, that those corporeal purposes serve a galaxy of space between a man's ears, whose suns and planets obey his own peculiar science, but one in which he alone recognizes the order, and only in glimpses, epiphanies that melt before he can speak or even think them--and the knowledge even this distant self is not his possession but belongs to others weighing and judging the dim and distant light he emits.”
― Bruce Holbert

“I cannot live, if I am already dead.”
― Donna Russo Morin, To Serve a King