Quotes by American Authors - Page 3178

We're standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you're asking me to marry you?""Perfect timing.
J D ROBB
Yer a good lad, Atticus, mowin’ me lawn and killin’ what Brits come around.
Kevin Hearne
I've got death inside me. It's just a question of whether or not I can outlive it.
Don DeLillo
Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon't hear whenyour back isturned.
Charles Bukowski
Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.
J.D. Salinger
To escape death, she'd become death.
Sarah J Maas
The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.
Sylvia Plath
Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.
Meghan O'Rourke
I’ll never speak to God again.
Sylvia Plath
I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.
Robert Goolrick
Well I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death.
Cassandra Clare
But I don't know what to him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you.
Suzanne Collins
Summertime is always the best of what might be.
Charles Bowden
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
Edgar Allan Poe
It’s not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It’s part of the deal we made.
Mitch Albom
In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
Carlos Castañeda
You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is. . . . This is our destiny. Not yours.
Alyson Noel
He Is Not DeadI cannot say, and I will not sayThat he is dead. He is just away.With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,He has wandered into an unknown landAnd left us dreaming how very fairIt needs must be, since he lingers there.And you—oh you, who the wildest yearnFor an old-time step, and the glad return,Think of him faring on, as dearIn the love of There as the love of Here.Think of him still as the same. I say,He is not dead—he is just away.
James Whitcomb Riley
Grief reunites you with what you've lost. It's a merging; you go with the loved thing or person that's going away. You follow it a far as you can go.But finally,the grief goes away and you phase back into the world. Without him.And you can accept that. What the hell choice is there? You cry, you continue to cry, because you don't ever completely come back from where you went with him -- a fragment broken off your pulsing, pumping heart is there still. A cut that never heals.And if, when it happens to you over and over again in life, too much of your heart does finally go away, then you can't feel grief any more. And then you yourself are ready to die. You'll walk up the inclined ladder and someone else will remain behind grieving for you.
Philip K Dick
When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.We lived and died together.All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses.
Sherman Alexie
Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Hazel has to realize that her mom was wrong when she said, “I won’t be a mother anymore.” The truth is, after Hazel dies (assuming she dies), her mom will still be her mom, just as my grandmother is still my grandmother even though she has died. As long as either person is still alive, that relationship survives. (It changes, but it survives.)
John Green
I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already.
Veronica Roth
No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.
Don DeLillo
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
H.L. Mencken
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death.
Fran Lebowitz
Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.Then the almost unnameable lust returns.Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention,the furniture you have placed under the sun.But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic.In this way, heavy and thoughtful,warmer than oil or water,I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.I did not think of my body at needle point.Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.Suicides have already betrayed the body.Still-born, they don't always die,but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweetthat even children would look on and smile.To thrust all that life under your tongue!—that, all by itself, becomes a passion.Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,and yet she waits for me, year after year,to so delicately undo an old wound,to empty my breath from its bad prison.Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,leaving the page of the book carelessly open,something unsaid, the phone off the hookand the love, whatever it was, an infection.
Anne Sexton
Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
Charles Bukowski
I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
Catherynne M. Valente
LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.Peel off the napkinO my enemy.Do I terrify?--The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?The sour breathWill vanish in a day.Soon, soon the fleshThe grave cave ate will beAt home on meAnd I a smiling woman.I am only thirty.And like the cat I have nine times to die.This is Number Three.What a trashTo annihilate each decade.What a million filaments.The peanut-crunching crowdShoves in to seeThem unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease.Gentlemen, ladiesThese are my handsMy knees.I may be skin and bone,Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.The first time it happened I was ten.It was an accident.The second time I meantTo last it out and not come back at all.I rocked shutAs a seashell.They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.DyingIs an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I've a call.It's easy enough to do it in a cell.It's easy enough to do it and stay put.It's the theatricalComeback in broad dayTo the same place, the same face, the same bruteAmused shout:'A miracle!'That knocks me out.There is a chargeFor the eyeing of my scars, there is a chargeFor the hearing of my heart--It really goes.And there is a charge, a very large chargeFor a word or a touchOr a bit of bloodOr a piece of my hair or my clothes.So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.I am your opus,I am your valuable,The pure gold babyThat melts to a shriek.I turn and burn.Do not think I underestimate your great concern.Ash, ash--You poke and stir.Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--A cake of soap, A wedding ring,A gold filling.Herr God, Herr LuciferBewareBeware.Out of the ashI rise with my red hairAnd I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath
In my dream I know I am falling. But there is no up or down, no walls or sides or ceilings, just the sensation of cold and darkness everywhere. I am so scared I could scream. But when I open my mouth, nothing happens. And I wonder if you fall forever and never touch down, is it really still falling? I think I will fall forever.
Lauren Oliver
I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.
Mitch Albom
The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.
Sylvia Plath
who wants flowers when youre dead? nobody.
J.D. Salinger
Honor from death,” I snap, “is a myth. Invented by the war torn to make sense of the horrific. If we die, it will be so that others may live. Truly honorable death, the only honorable death, is one that enables life.
Rae Carson
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George S. McGovern
Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave bereft I am not there. I have not left.
Mary Elizabeth Frye
She had always found villains more exciting than heroes. They had ambition, passion. They made the stories happen. Villains didn't fear death. No, they wrapped themselves in death like suits of armor! As she inhaled the school's graveyard smell, Agatha felt her blood rush. For like all villains, death didn't scare her. It made her feel alive.
Soman Chainani
And if one day,' she said, really crying now, 'you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn't even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to that is was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud.
Patrick Ness
I told you before, Jem, that you would not leave me," Will said, his bloody hand on the hilt of the dagger. " And you are still with me. When I breath, I will think of you, for without you I would have been dead years ago. When I wake up and when I sleep, when I lift up my hands to defend myself or when I lie down to die, you will be with me. You say we are born again. I say there is a river that divides the dead and the living. What I do know is that if we are born again, I will meet you in another life, if there is a river, you will wait on the shores for me to come to you, so we can cross together." Will took a deep breath and let go of the knife. He drew his hand back. The cut on his palm was already healing- the result of the half dozen iratzes on his skin. " You hear that, James Carstairs? We are bound, you and I, over the divide of death, down through whatever generations may come. Forever." He rose to his feet and looked down at the knife. The knife was Jem's, the blood was his. This spot of ground, whether he could ever find it again, whether he lived to try, would be theirs.He turned around to walk to Balios, towards Wales and Tessa. He did not look back.
Cassandra Clare
It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
John Steinbeck
Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.
Gavin de Becker
It was a hurting tune, resigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind to say goodbye.
Kristin Cashore
. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don't live as long as people do.
John Grogan
Even in the grave, all is not lost.
Edgar Allan Poe
Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I've heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that's what it's like, I wouldn't mind. If that's what dying is like, I wouldn't mind that at all.
Gayle Forman
I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call.
Roger Zelazny
If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.
Clifford Odets
I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.
Sylvia Plath
Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life.
Maria V. Snyder
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Horace Mann
I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.
Jonathan Safran Foer
It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.
Chuck Palahniuk
I will not tell you our love story, because-like all real love stories-it will die with us,as it should.
John Green
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Sylvia Plath
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt
Hunter S. Thompson
I went down to the river,I set down on the bank.I tried to think but couldn't,So I jumped in and sank.
Langston Hughes
You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.
Laurell K. Hamilton
... It's perfect! Locke would appreciate it.""Bug," Calo said, "Locke is our brother and our love for him knows no bounds. But the four most fatal words in the Therin language are 'Locke would appreciate it.'""Rivalled only by 'Locke taught me a new trick,'" added Galo."The only person who gets away with Locke Lamora games ...""... is Locke ...""... because we think the gods are saving him up for a really big death. Something with knives and hot irons ...""... and fifty thousand cheering spectators.
Scott Lynch
in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck
Charles Bukowski