Quotes by American Authors - Page 3167

The Angel of Death is always a young person, or a group of young people, you'll begin seeing them left and right soon.
Benjamin R. Smith
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
Erik H. Erikson
Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.
James Baldwin
I will miss it so,” she said beside him. “This hell of a place, I will miss it so much. This fat body, walking mud puddle, deceived by everything, this impossible, ruinous accident of a world, these people who would truly rather hurt one another than eat—oh, there is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do to stay here ten minutes longer. Oh, I will leave claw marks, I will drag mountains and forests away under my fingernails when I am dragged off. Such a stupid way to feel. I will be all dirty from clutching at this stupid planet, and the gods will laugh at me.
Peter S Beagle
From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?
Ray Bradbury
That cake tasted good. But the cake in the garbage tasted better. It was the best cake I ever ate.
Loretta Ellsworth
The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.
Anthony T. Kronman
Kate lost a mother," I said, "but I lost a nothing."Kate doesn't feel that way," Jack assured me.But what about everybody else besides Kate? How can I ever explain to anyone what she was when she and I had no name? People need names for everything. I wasn't a relative or a friend, I was just an object of her kindness.". I buried my face in his shoulder.True kindness is stabilizing," I went on. "When you feel it and when you express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. Like all there is to achieve. It's life, demystified. A place out of self, a network of simple pleasures, not a waltz, but like whirls within a waltz."You're the one now," Jack said definitively. "That's why you met her. She had something she had to pass on." (p. 95)
Hilary Thayer Hamann
the meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture - it begins in the dignity with which we treat the dead
Frank Herbert
Only the previous day, Arch had found him in a spirit-dance corral, blistering the creatures to the point of death, such was his need to touch and destroy.
Frank Beddor
Supermarkets this large and clean and modern are a revelation to me. I spent my life in small steamy delicatessens with slanted display cabinets full of trays that hold soft wet lumpy matter in pale colours. High enough cabinets so you had to stand on tiptoes to give your order. Shouts, accents. In cities no one notices specific dying. Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere. Men shout as they die to be noticed, remembered for a second or two. To die in an apartment instead of a house can depress the soul, I would imagine, for several lives to come. In a town there are houses, plants in bay windows. People notice dying better. The dead have faces, automobiles. If you don't know a name you know a street name, a dog's name. 'He drove an orange Mazda.' You know a couple of useless things about a person that become major facts of identification and cosmic placement when he dies suddenly, after a short illness, in his own bed, with a comforter and matching pillows, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, feverish, a little congested in the sinuses and chest, thinking about his dry cleaning.
Don DeLillo
Now when I die, I shall only be dead.
Richard Matheson
Everything science has taught me strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.
Werner Von Braun
Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write symphonies..
Jon Krakauer
We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.
Ekaterina Sedia
You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.
J.D. Salinger
And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.
Mark Doty
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.
Cormac McCarthy
Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think... when I get tired enough... I think I'll just sit down
Stephen King
And no child deserved to die for defending her father, no matter who she was
Janice Hardy
I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
Stephen Levine
Please not yet. Those are the three eternal words. Please not yet.
John D. MacDonald
- had a million things to do today; death would have to wait, -(The Tin Star)
J.L. Langley
Having second thoughts?” Puck’s voice was soft and dangerous, a far cry from his normal flippancy. “I thought we put this behind us for now.”“Never,” I said, matching his stare. “I can’t ever take it back, Goodfellow. I’m still going to kill you. I swore to her I would.” Lighting flickered overhead, and thunder rumbled in the distance as we faced each other with narrowed eyes. “One day,” I said softly. “One day you’ll look up, and I’ll be there. That’s the only ending for us. Don’t ever forget.
Julie Kagawa
How many boys like him were out there in the ether, holding on to their big brothers and sisters who were still alive? How many husbands were floating between life and death, clinging to their wives in this world? And how may millions and millions of people were there in the world like Charlie who wouldn't let go of their loved ones when they're gone?
Ben Sherwood
At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.
Christopher Hitchens
The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.
David Sedaris
Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed.
Christopher Hitchens
In so many senseless deaths, beauty is to blame.
Suzanne Finnamore
How did your mother die?” asked Delk.“Car accident,” Katie replied, gazing out over the water. “She’d been to mass. A tire blew on the way home, and she was gone. I was nineteen, Pather’s age, when it happened. My brother was only eleven.” She paused. “I do know what you’re going through.” Katie looked at her.“Pather told you?” Katie nodded. Delk was glad Pather had told his sister; she was relieved not to have to tell the story again. “Does it ever . . . you know . . . get any better?”Katie shrugged her narrow shoulders and smiled. “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.
Suzanne Supplee
Life dies but forever will there be music. Always.
Nicholas A. McGirr
And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Edgar Allan Poe
With mind distracted, never thinking, "Death is coming,"To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,And then to come out empty--it is a tragic error. (116)trans by Robert Thurman
Huston Smith
There is a child - a baby - who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food. For flesh.
Carrie Ryan
At the end, one didn't remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments.
David Levien
Kill you all!" The clown was laughing and screaming. "Try to stop me and I'll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can't stop me!
Stephen King
He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
Cormac McCarthy
Everything but a life can be replaced.
Marty Rubin
It was one thing to live in a world where death stood a distant figure, quite another to hold it in your hands.
David Wroblewski
Dreams link us to those who have already left this life.
Doug Dillon
His life spells living. Your life or my life, apart from Him, spells death.
Ravi Zacharias
She cannot possibly be dead, people do not just die
John Green
What is life? It departs covertly. Like a thief Death took him.
John Gunther
There's still a thousand places I haven't gone to die.
Chuck Palahniuk
I think...I think its always been you who was dying,"- Delaney
Megan Miranda
I wonder if it will rain after we die. When you kill yourself, you don't know what happens next, afterward.
Albert Borris
poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you
Walt Whitman
Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.
Clifford D. Simak
Think about that for a moment. They died for you. Now take a good look at the life you're living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?
Mira Grant
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…
Cynthia Hand
That’s what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child’s game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.
Lev Grossman
What I have learned lately is that people deal with death in all sorts of ways. Some of us fight against it, doing everything we can to make it not true. Some of us lose our selves to grief. Some of us lose ourselves to anger.
Carrie Jones
Death is a state of mind---many people on Earth spend their entire lives dead.
Gabrielle Zevin
My faceless neighbor spoke up:“Don’t be deluded. Hitler has made it clear that he will annihilate all Jews before the clock strikes twelve.”I exploded:“What do you care what he said? Would you want us to consider him a prophet?His cold eyes stared at me. At last he said, wearily:“I have more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He alone has kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.
Elie Wiesel
It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.
Nora Roberts
He comes down next to me, and when I hold out my hand, he takes it. Our fingers lace together. And in that feeling, that perfect feeling of our hands and fingers pressed together, I want to tell him everything. I want to tell him about Josh, and his sister, Emily. I want to tell him about tall, crazy Gert. I want to tell him about bridges and funerals, and most of all, maps. More than anything else, I want to tell him about myself. I want to tell him that I know what things look like from above now. There's so much I want to tell him, because I know he'll understand.
Shawn Klomparens
We are all dying one by one. We all smell of mortality, and we can't wash it off.
Siri Hustvedt
The other mammoths were as protective of the dying as they were of newborns, and they gathered around tying to make the fallen one get up. When all was over, they buried the dead ancestor under piles of dirt, grass, leaves, or snow. Mammoths were even known to bury other dead animals, including humans.
Jean M. Auel
It's a tragic fact to die in an accident
Gabrielle Zevin
How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike.
Ray Bradbury