Quotes by American Authors - Page 3177

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.
David Foster Wallace
Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…
Harriet Beecher Stowe
You know, lieutenant, you wear your weapon the way other women wear pearls.""It's not a fashion accessory.
J D ROBB
I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.
Dorothy B. Hughes
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.
John Green
What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.
Sylvia Plath
Death, especially violent death, will turn the meanest bastard in the world into a nice guy. Why is that?
Laurell K. Hamilton
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!
John Muir
Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.
R.A. Salvatore
The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl....
Abigail Padgett
And I could have died right then. And considering how things went, I really should have.
Ned Vizzini
Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
Ally Condie
The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.
Don DeLillo
A statue stands in a shaded placeAn angel girl with an upturned faceA name is written on a polished rockA broken heart that the world forgot
Martina Mcbride
Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.
Caitlin Doughty
Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.
Carlos Castañeda
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
Henry David Thoreau
What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.
David Levithan
I thought of you and how you love this beauty,And walking up the long beach all aloneI heard the waves breaking in measured thunderAs you and I once heard their monotone.Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond meThe cold and sparkling silver of the sea --We two will pass through death and ages lengthenBefore you hear that sound again with me.
Sara Teasdale
Death is part of who we are. It guidesus. It shapes us. It drives us to madness. Can you still be human if you have no mortal end
Christopher Paolini
We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...
Michael Cunningham
By daily dying, I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke
Was there ever a war where only one side bled?
George R.R. Martin
Jon Snow, is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?”“It is.” Jon took her hand.“Good,” she whispered. “I wanted t’ see one proper castle, before … before I …”“You’ll see hundred castles. The battle’s done. Maester Aemon will see to you. You’re kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we’ll get milk of the poppy for the pain.”She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.”“We’ll go back to the cave,” he said.” You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.”“Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.
George R.R. Martin
Merciful death. How you love your precious guilt
Anne Rice
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 other of the stories only they knew. Of the girl who had hit over the head with a water jug the boy who had come to rescue her, and how he had fallen in love with her in that instant. Of a ballroom and a balcony and the moon sailing like a ship untethered through the sky. Of the flutter of the wings of the clockwork Angel. Of holy water and blood.
Cassandra Clare
We all didn't come into to the world at the same time so it makes sense that we don't leave it at the same time.
Lurlene McDaniel
It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must be a little in love with death!
Eugene O'Neill
Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
Ray Bradbury
In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog’s master whispers in the dog’s ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog’s soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.I am ready.
Garth Stein
I'm so sorry, Henri," I whisper in his ear. I close my eyes. "I love you. I wouldn't have missed a second of it, either. Not for anything," I whisper. "I'm going to take you back yet. Somehow I am going to get you back to Lorien. We always joked about it but you were my father, the best father I could have ever asked for. I'll never forget you, not for a minute for as long as I live. I love you, Henri. I always did.
Pittacus Lore
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I loveIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I meanBut I shall be good health to you nonethelessAnd filter and fibre your blood.
Walt Whitman
Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise.
Kim Harrison
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
Chuck Palahniuk
He cries. 'Please! I don't want to die.'I lean over. My hair smothers him.'Then you should never have been born,' I say.
Christopher Pike
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us
Jim Morrison
I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.
Jennifer Donnelly
One to be a murderer. One to be a Martyr. One to be a Monarch. One to go Mad
Marissa Meyer
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
Steven Wright
...and there you have it, another body on the floor surrounded by things that don't mean much to anyone except to the one who can't take any of them along.
Mark Z. Danielewski
When someone you love dies, you are given the gift of "second chances". Their eulogy is a reminder that the living can turn their lives around at any point. You’re not bound by the past; that is who you used to be. You’re reminded that your feelings are not who you are, but how you felt at that moment. Your bad choices defined you yesterday, but they are not who you are today. Your future doesn’t have to travel the same path with the same people. You can start over. You don’t have to apologize to people that won’t listen. You don’t have to justify your feelings or actions, during a difficult time in your life. You don’t have to put up with people that are insecure and want you to fail. All you have to do is walk forward with a positive outlook, and trust that God has a plan that is greater than the sorrow you left behind. The people of quality that were meant to be in your life won’t need you to explain the beauty of your heart. They already understand what being human is----a roller coaster ride of emotions during rainstorms and sunshine, sprinkled with moments when you can almost reach the stars.
Shannon L. Alder
Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?
Jodi Picoult
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..
Laurie Faria Stolarz
You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew.
John Green
Something has spoken to me in the night...and told me that I shall die, I know not where. Saying: "[Death is] to lose the earth you know for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.
Thomas Wolfe
I died for beauty but was scarceAdjusted in the tomb,When one who died for truth was lainIn an adjoining room.He questioned softly why I failed?"For beauty," I replied."And I for truth, the two are one;We brethren are," he said.And so, as kinsmen met a night,We talked between the rooms,Until the moss had reached our lips,And covered up our names.
Emily Dickinson
Chronic anxiety is a state more undesirable than any other, and we will try almost any maneuver to eliminate it. Modern man is living in anxious anticipation of destruction. Such anxiety can be easily eliminated by self-destruction. As a German saying puts it: 'Better an end with terror than a terror without end.
Robert E. Neale
Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die.
Cormac McCarthy
If this continues, if this goes on, then when I die, your memories of me will be my greatest accomplishment. You memories will be my most lasting impressions.
David Levithan
Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.
Jim Carroll
Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.
Lauren Oliver
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. Some will never again love with that level of abandon where life is perceived as innocent and the threat of loss seems implausible. Love and loss, therefore, are linked.
Donna Lynn Hope
Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.
Tom Robbins
I held her close for only a short time, but after she was gone, I'd see her smile on the face of a perfect stranger and I knew she would be there with me all the rest of my days.
Brian Andreas
And then I did what I had never done in his presence, much less in his arms. I cried.
Erich Segal
Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.Aaron’s Noise roars up in red and black.The current takes us on.“I’m sorry!” I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can’t barely breathe. “I’m sorry, Manchee!”?”“Manchee!” I scream.Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.“MANCHEE!”?”And Aaron wrenches his arms and there’s a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.And the pain is too much it’s too much it’s too much and my hands are on my head and I’m rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that’s inside of me.
Patrick Ness
Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell.
Anne Rice
Everyone sounded the same when they died.
Sarah J Maas
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
Edgar Allan Poe