A Friend's Death Quotes & Sayings

ATIONS. Life after death was one thing, life coming into the world was another. Georgia was calm. Beautiful. An old pro, as she put it. But I had missed the first time around, and I was afraid to blink for fear of missing something. And I was not calm.
Tag was not calm either. He had to wait outside. He was my best friend, but even best friends did not share some things. Plus, I didn't think Georgia could give birth and keep us both from passing out.
It was all I could do to hold Georgia's hand and stay at her bedside, praying to God, to Gi, to Eli, to anyone who would listen, to give me strength and self-control. Strength to be the man Georgia needed and self-control to resist covering the walls of Georgia's hospital room in a frenzied mural — Amy Harmon

Yet, in these autumn days when Nature expires, Here, in these veiled scenes, I find more attractions; It is a friend's sad goodbye; it is the last smile From lips that death is going to close forever! — Alphonse De Lamartine

He was a strong and noble lord with piercing eyes of grey.
He sat upon his noble throne shining like the dawn.
His sword flashed like the brightest star.
He led our people well.
Yet here and now he lays in blood pierced with arrows.
He was the friend of many knights.
He loved the warrior games.
His heart was won by a lady fair for marriage they did wait.
A kindly prince, his duty carried him to another's bed.
And on her death true love returned, finally they wed.
He felt the grief of children lost to murder and to pain.
I was the youngest of his blood.
I'll never be the same.
Here lays my father and my lord.
I know not what to say.
Except my father and my lord was slain here on this day.
Here lays my father and my lord.
I know not what to say.
Except my father and my lord was slain here on this day ... . — Laurel A. Rockefeller

My code of life and conduct is simply this: work hard, play to the allowable limit, disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others, never do a friend a dirty trick, eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like, never grow indignant over anything, trust to tobacco for calm and serenity, bathe twice a day ... learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private, never allow one's self even a passing thought of death, never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin, live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities, treat one's enemies with polite inconsideration, avoid persons who are chronically in need, and be satisfied with life always but never with one's self. — George Jean Nathan

Surely there is a fitness in the institution of the Lord's Supper as a standing memorial by which the church at large may commemorate the grandest act, and by which the heart of each individual believer may be reminded of his dearest friend. You, who have learned to love the Saviour, will prize His ordinance for the Saviour's sake. You who rejoice in the salvation purchased by His dying, will not fail with gratitude and faith to show the Lord's death until He come. — William Morley Punshon

As a kid, I succumbed to peer pressure; I created an image of myself that was not true. But that belief system ended with the death of a close friend. It was then that I reached out for help from my father. It wasn't the teachings of The Four Agreements exactly, it was just my father's teachings in general. And because of this, I am grateful to continue my family's legacy. In this way, I say "thank you" to my family and teachers before me. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

IT was a sad if not an altogether broken young man who came to live in London after Wilde's death. He could not yet realize that people, and particularly people in what was still called Society, had an uneasy conscience about their treatment of his friend and would fasten on him as a convenient scapegoat. We did not kill the man's genius, they said in effect, we did not encourage a conspiracy to imprison him by means of a preposterous law, we are not to blame for his barren last years and early death; it was all the fault of this young man who bewitched him into a disastrous attack on his father, who is still free, rich, handsome, as we are not. — Rupert Croft-Cooke

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man - his courage and hope, or lack of them - and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. The ultimate cause of my friend's death was that the expected liberation did not come and he was severely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body's resistance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to illness - and thus the voice of his dream was right after all. — Viktor E. Frankl

A friend of ours said if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazis after WWII, that every single one of them, every last rich white one of them, from Truman on would be hung to death and shot. And this current administration is no exception. They should be hung and tried and shot as war criminals. — Zack De La Rocha

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it,
but longing to degrade not even death;
we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends,
to feel its hands about us like a friend's. — Rainer Maria Rilke

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

You're learning, friend.'
'The lessons of civilization.'
'Just so. There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.'
'With words.'
'Indeedm with words. Form an opinion, say it ofren enough and pretty soon everyone's saying it right back at you, and then it becomes a conviction, fed by unreasoning anger and defended with a fight to the death. — Steven Erikson

It seems that the people of Oran are like that friend of Flaubert who, on the point of death, casting a last glance at the irreplaceable earth, exclaimed: Close the window, it's too beautiful. — Albert Camus

The judge punishes lawbreakers as a burning house injures its occupants. A person may be burned to death while robbing a home or saving a friend. Similarly, from a moral point of view, the judge's work is good or evil, depending on whether the laws he enforces are good or evil. — Thomas Szasz

A ridiculous fear pursued me, in fact: one could not die without having confessed all one's lies. Not to God or to one of his representatives; I was above that, as you well imagine. No, it was a matter of confessing to men, to a friend, to a beloved woman, for example. Otherwise, were there but one lie hidden in life, death made it definitive. No one, ever again, would know the truth at this point, since the only one to know it was precisely the dead man sleeping on his secret. The absolute murder of truth used to make me dizzy. — Albert Camus

LADY CAPULET: Evermore weeping for your
cousin's death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
An if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;
But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
JULIET: Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.
LADY CAPULET: So shall you feel the loss,
but not the friend
Which you weep for.
JULIET: Feeling so the loss,
Cannot choose but ever weep the friend.
LADY CAPULET: Well, girl, thou weep'st not so much for
his death,
As that the villain lives which slaughter'd him. — William Shakespeare

Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"
At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.
Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.
Of course I told him about you," Liesel said. — Markus Zusak

Danger is a fool's acquaintance,
death is his friend,
and wisdom is his enemy. — Matshona Dhliwayo

YOU MUSTN'T BE AFRAID OF DEATH
you're a deathless soul
you can't be kept in a dark grave
you're filled with God's glow
be happy with your beloved
you can't find any better
the world will shimmer
because of the diamond you hold
when your heart is immersed
in this blissful love
you can easily endure
any bitter face around
in the absence of malice
there is nothing but
happiness and good times
don't dwell in sorrow my friend
ghazal number 2594 — Rumi

30 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste; Then can I drown an eye (unus'd to flow) For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight; Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before: But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end. — William Shakespeare

I woke up one morning, and I couldn't move my arm. It was the oddest thing, the paralysis. I called up a friend and said, "I think I've had a stroke," and, in fact, that's what my doctor told me. It wasn't terrible, but it was enough to scare me. Now I think about death all the time. I have my death arm, my right arm. — Doris Lessing

What's a friend for if not to face almost certain death with, eh? — Katie MacAlister

It was all a mistake," he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. "I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads - you know where it is. You've got to admit it's a good job of building." Sam laughed, staring around. "And that Martian - I know he was a friend of yours - came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice." The — Ray Bradbury

Feste. Are you ready, sir?

Orsino. Ay; prithee, sing.
[Music] 945
SONG.

Feste. Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 950
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet 955
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where 960
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
Orsino. There's for thy pains.
Feste. No pains, sir: I take pleasure in singing, sir.

Orsino. I'll pay thy pleasure then. 965

Feste. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.

From Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 4. — William Shakespeare

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."
She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. She made it with infinite care, and hung it to the slightly careening mantel over the stove in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear.
Afterwards the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins. — Stephen Crane

She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.
'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada'
'That's how dumb we were,' I say.
'You could be sisters,' the nurse says.
So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask?
They do not ask.
Two months, and how long is the drive?
The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not eh grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his care on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death.
I mean, he died.
So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it. — Amy Hempel

Opal is dead, and I don't see how a healer can change that! It's not something to joke about."
Joke?" Then Owen hit his forehead and cried, "That's right, you haven't heard!"
Heard what?" asked Adrien, who felt an insane glimmer of hope return to his heart.
Death is on strike! She hasn't done that for two centuries, and it's very annoying. Your friend is alive."
Very annoying?" repeated Amber. "I don't see what's so annoying about a miracle! What is Death on strike for?"
Everyone knows that Death lives in Fairytale-in an inaccessible area, obviously. And just a few hours ago, she decided to stop working. So, for now, no one can die. — Flavia Bujor

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."
He wiped my cheeks, saying Ssshh. 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

It's not that I don't appreciate my life sober, but it's like there are two different people battling inside of me. I want to be good, do good, be a worker among workers, a friend among friends. But there's also this part of me that is so dissatisfied with everything, If I'm not living on the verge of death, I feel like I'm not really living. — Nic Sheff

Reading private correspondence is in poor taste, Lord Ackerly."
"Unless it is terribly interesting," Eleanor says, "which Jessamin's letters are not. Mine, however, are lurid tales of my near-death experience and subsequent sequestering against my will in the home of the mysterious and brooding Lord Ackerly. I fear I may have given you a tragic past and a deadly secret or two."
"Are we staying in a decaying Gothic abbey?" I ask.
"Naturally. When I'm finished, there won't be a person in all the city who isn't writhing with jealousy over the heart-pounding drama of my life." She pauses, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her chin. "I don't suppose you have a cousin? I could very much use a romantic foil."
Finn shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Alas. As long as I'm not the friend who meets a tragic end that brings you two together forever through shared grief." Her line meets dead silence, and a sly grin splits her face. "Oh wait, I nearly was. — Kiersten White

Try it! You might like it !! I wrote this letter to tell you that I am very, very sorry. When you are mad at me, your face looks like Daddy's when he smelled that skunk that was hiding in the garage. And this made me very sad. Your face, not the smelly skunk. Are you still mad? Pleeze circle one: YES NO If you are still mad, pleeze accept my sorryness for taking your clock, calling you a sandwich stealer, playing games on your phone and drawing my very cute face on it, and trying to call Price Princess Sugar Plum. I did not reech her. But I did reech a guy named Moe by mistake, and he was not very polite at all. He said if I reech him again he will call the cops. That would be very bad becuz I do not think they serve chicken nuggets in jail. Then I would starve to death, which would not be a very fun time . Anyway, I made this sandwich just for you because I really care about you. I hope you love it! You are my very best friend! After Miss Penelope and Princess Sugar Plum. — Rachel Renee Russell

Your friend Mikey knew what my touch could do, but he didn't tell me. He turned me into a murderer. Worse than a murderer."
"I think," said Nick, "they call that manslaughter or wrongful death, don't they? I mean, when it's an accident or out of ignorance, or something."
Clarence turned to Nick, studying him with his Everlost eye. "You're a lot smarter than you were back in the cage," Clarence said. "You look better too. Back then you were a thing, now you're almost a person."
"Thanks . . . but 'almost' is still 'almost.'"
"Yeah, well, we're all almost something. — Neal Shusterman

I began to meditate upon the writer's life. It is full of tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world's indifference; then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit to a good grace of its hazards...But he has one compensation, Whenever he has anything on his mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white, using it as a theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget all about it. He is the only free man. — W. Somerset Maugham

You better hope she doesn't say a word," Gabe warned, lifting a finger to Uri's nose.
Uri grabbed the finger laughing, "What are you going to do, cupcake? Seduce me to death, in all your sexy glory?"
"Just shut up," Gabe groaned, pushing the door shut in his friend's face. — Wendy Owens

I didn't choose to be the Angel of Death, blast it!" He practically spat the words. When she blinked, taken aback by his vehemence, he added, "That was some fool's idea of a joke"
She kept staring at him, speechless. A joke? Her brother's death was a joke to someone?
Seeing her reaction, he went on in a low, tortured voice, "After Roger's accident, I wore black to mourn him. Since Roger wasn't my family, Chetwin commented on it, saying that I dressed in black because Death was my constant companion. He pointed out that everyone I touched died
my parents, my best friend ... everyone."
He began to pace the clearing, pain etched in his features. "Chetwin was right, of course. Death was my constant companion. So it was no great surprise when other people started calling me the Angel of Death." His voice grew choked. "I fit the part, after all."
-Gabriel to Virginia — Sabrina Jeffries

We used to have a family game, invented by my sister and a friend of hers - it was called 'Agatha's Husbands'. The idea was that they picked out two or at the most three of the most repellent looking strangers in a room, and it was then put to me that i had to choose one of them as a husband, on pain of death or slow torture by the Chinese.
'now then, Agatha, which will you have - the fat young one with pimples, and the scurfy head, or that black one like a gorilla with the bulging eyes?'
'Oh I can't - they're so awful.'
'You must - it's got to be one of them. Or else red hot needles and water torture.'
'Oh dear, then the gorilla. — Agatha Christie

What happened?" I asked. "They shot you with a manticore spine. Who the fuck owns a manticore? Why would anyone actually decide they want to keep one of those ugly fuckers?" "I feel we're getting off topic here," I reminded him. "What. Happened?" "Right, well you went to sleep and they dragged us all down here, but Ellie here woke up. Tore some guy's arm off before they subdued her. By that point Alan and I had woken up, and they gave us all a kicking. Still, she tore some guy's arm off, which was pretty badass of her. If we find it, and then find him, can we beat him to death with it?" I stared at my fox friend for a moment. "I'd rather use something more . . . stable for bludgeoning someone to death, but sure, why not? — Steve McHugh

Brunetti's best friend had often said that he wanted death to take him just at the moment he laid his last lira down on a bar and said, 'Prosecco for everyone. — Donna Leon

My chest tightens to the point I fear my heart will suffocate from the pressure of it. Society's standards are the total opposite from how I was raised. The boy who I thought to be so strikingly handsome has less than a year of his life to live, my new friend only a few more months beyond that. Yet they are living these uneventful lives in which they don't think there is a reason for anything. Will I ever see my mother again, or is this how I will be forced to live the rest of my life, as well? — Jen Naumann

His story is colored by the murder of a brother, the rape of a sister, the betrayal of a friend, the pounding of nails into flesh and bone, and the darkening of the sky. A world of what-ifs and could-have-beens, peopled by has-beens and might-have-beens. It is a world soaked in fear and drenched by the blood of a million martyrs. A world of men burned at the stake and babes slaughtered at their mother's breasts. A dark history with pain oozing into all its hidden corners. At the center of history is a death. Christ's death, the decisive point of history. Christianity is perhaps the most morbid religion of the world. Perpetually meditating upon death with little crosses hung around their necks, Christian disciples sing their way to martyrdom. Anticipating death and calling it gain, Christians are evangelists of the grotesque. The very hope of the Gospel rests directly upon our ability to imagine a world in which suffering serves as the soil from which resurrection springs. — Ben Palpant

A lot of people who read my novel 'Smog City' ask me why I never killed off either of the two main characters. To be honest, it's because I've given them life. Not literally of course, but since I spent so much time developing and creating my characters, they've ended up with complex personalities, in fact they're almost sentient in a way, and to write them off as dead would be like killing a close friend to me. — Rebecca McNutt

Separation by death must finally be choked down,
but separation in life is a long anguish,
Chiang-nan is a pestilential land;
no word from you there in exile.
You have been in my dreams, old friend,
as if knowing how much I miss you.
Caught in a net,
how is it you still have wings?
I fear you are no longer mortal;
the distance to here is enormous.
When your spirit came, the maples were green;
when it went, the passes were black.
The setting moon spills light on the rafters;
for a moment I think it's your face.
The waters are deep, the waves wide;
don't let the river gods take you. — Du Fu

Would I fortify myself against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I extract consolation for myself or my friend, I must borrow it from Cicero. I might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason. I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though we could become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be wise but by his own wisdom. — Michel De Montaigne

I must be able to say, 'Percival, a ridiculous name'. At the same time let me tell you, men and women, hurrying to the tube station, you would have had to respect him. You would have had to form up and follow behind him. How strange to oar one's way through crowds seeing life through hollow eyes, burning eyes. — Virginia Woolf

Who makes things up? Who tells the real story? We all turn our lives into stories. It is a defining characteristic of our species. We retell our experiences. We quickly learn what parts are interesting to our listeners and what parts lag, and we shape our narratives accordingly. It doesn't mean we aren't telling the truth; we've simply learned which parts to leave out. Every time we tell the story again, we don't go back to the original event and start from scratch, we go back to the last time we told the story. It's the story we shape and improve on, we don't change what happened. This is also a way we have of protecting ourselves. It would be too painful to relive a childhood illness or the death of your best friend every time you had to speak of it. By telling the story from the story, instead of from the actual events, we are able to distance ourselves from our suffering. It also gives us the chance to make the story something people can hear. — Ann Patchett

After the second chapter of Days of Obligation, which is about the death of a friend of mine from AIDS, was published in Harper's, I got this rather angry letter from a gay-and-lesbian group that was organizing a protest against the magazine. It was the same old problem: political groups have almost no sense of irony. — Richard Rodriguez

Then Caspian caught up a battle-axe and rushed upon the Lord Drinian to kill him, and Drinian stood still as a stock for the death blow. But when the axe was raised, Caspian suddenly threw it away and cried out, "I have lost my queen and my son: shall I lose my friend also?" And he fell upon the Lord Drinian's neck and embraced him and both wept, as their friendship was not broken. — C.S. Lewis

Air buffeted him and he heard the heavy flap of wings. Rake smiled. "Silanah," he said softly, knowing she would hear him. The red dragon slipped between two towers and banked, returning to his position. "I know you sense the Demon Lord's presence, Silanah. You would help me in this. I know, I know." He shook his head. "Return to Moon's Spawn, dear friend. This battle is mine. Yours is done. But know this: if I fail, you may seek to avenge my death." Silanah swept overhead and loosed a thin wail. "Go home," Rake whispered. The red dragon cried again, then swung westward and rose through the night air. — Steven Erikson

Like the cat who finds her way back home over a thousand miles, like the dog who waits for his master to arrive on the train that never comes, like the one who keeps a vigil at her master's grave until she too can cross the bridge, some people and their pets are woven together by threads of life and they cannot, and will not, for long be separated. — Kate McGahan

It seemed to Kitty a pity that her new friend's mind was set so irrevocably upon marriage, but her suggestion that Olivia might seek an eligible situation as a governess met with no favour at all. Olivia stared at her with dismay in her big eyes, and unequivocally stated her preference for death. — Georgette Heyer

Poor friend and learned physician, my sensitive and gentle companion, instead of treating and curing the sick you yourself have fallen beneath the yoke of death, and now belong to death's kingdom. For many months you have witnessed such suffering and horror as the human mind can scarcely conceive, as he who sees cannot believe. Perhaps it is for the best that your nerves have betrayed you, that a benevolent veil of forgetfulness has fallen upon your mind. Now, at least, you need not fret or worry about what the future may hold in store for you. — Miklos Nyiszli

I think, in real life, when we're facing death - that is, when we come out on the other side of it, whether it's death of a friend or a family member - you come out on the other side of the mourning cherishing your life that much more. — Tony DiTerlizzi

As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion - usually both at the same time - as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife. — Tom Robbins

It's a little hard not to worry when my best friend keeps on dying. — Kristin Cast

He has spoken blasphemy." This was a wrong charge to bring - for Pilate, having his superstition again aroused - is even more afraid to put him to death. And he comes out again, and says, "I find no fault in Him." What a strong contest between good and evil in that man's heart! But they cried out again, "If you let this man go you are not Caesar's friend." They hit the mark this time, and he yields to their clamor. He brings forth a basin of water, and he washes his hands before them all, and he says, "I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it." A poor way of escaping! That water could not wash the blood from his hands, though their cry did bring the blood on their heads - "His blood be on us, and on our children. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

... Look, I'm real sorry about Cheryl, I know you loved her a lot," Mandy apologized gloomily. "It's wrong that people have to keep killing off Pollution."
"It's alright, I think she wants to be remediated," Alecto told her calmly, though his grief-stricken and depressed expression said more to Mandy than his words did.
"You don't have to forget Cheryl, no matter what Mearth said to you," Mandy pointed out. "People shouldn't be forced to forget what they love, or to just get over the death of what they love. Cheryl was your friend and nobody can make you forget her if you don't want to. — Rebecca McNutt

The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen ... you will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean. Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal. — Robert Toombs

Grace was my best friend. I can't let anyone forget her. I'm sure you understand."
Mr. Farrow smiled, but the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "Of course, it's easy to rewrite history when we lose a loved one, isn't it? Sometimes we only remember the things we want to remember. — Lisa Roecker

It used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it was. — William Faulkner

Each and every day, I get
One letter like a bride.
I'm responding to my friend,
Writing late at night:

"On my way into the dark,
I've stopped in white death's den.
My dear, don't leave an evil mark
On another man."

And a brilliant star gleams
Between two trees at night,
Calmly promising that dreams
Will soon be satisfied. — Anna Akhmatova

12 I wrote to Mrs. Traynor. I didn't tell her about Lily, just that I hoped she was well, that I was back from my travels and would be in her area in a few weeks with a friend, and would like to say hello if possible. I sent it first class, and felt oddly excited as it plopped into the postbox. Dad had told me over the phone that she had left Granta House within weeks of Will's death. He said the estate workers had been shocked, but I thought back to the time I had spotted Mr. Traynor out with Della, the woman he was now about to — Jojo Moyes

Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples. Like Mary Magdalene, the reason we stand and weep and listen for Jesus is because we, like Mary, are bearers of resurrection, we are made new. On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid. To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles, and like my friend Don did at Dylan Klebold's funeral,t hat death is not the final word. To defiantly say, once again, that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it. And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, we still make our song alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him ... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create
so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. — Pearl S. Buck

Death is hard, and facing death is painful. But even more painful is the feeling that no one cares. To not have a friend in the world. Some of us died surrounded by loved ones. Some of us had loved ones who couldn't make it in time, who were too far away or just off getting some sleep. But there are also those us us who can tell you what it's like to have no one who you love, no one who loves you. It is very hard to stay alive just for your own sake. — David Levithan

Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all. — John Green

A friend said to me, 'Be glad for your troubles - they strengthen you.' Well, if that's the truth, I'm going to be so strong they'll have to beat me to death! — Sonia Johnson

At the worst it can only be death, and a man's death is not a calf's, and the dreaded Hereafter may still be open to me. God help me in my task! Goodbye, Mina, if I fail. Goodbye, my faithful friend and second father. Goodbye, all, and last of all Mina! Same — Bram Stoker

You know better than I," he said, "that all courts-martial are farces and that you're really paying for the crimes of
other people, because this time we're going to win the war at any price. Wouldn't you have done the same in my place?"
General Moncada got up to clean his thick horn-rimmed glasses on his shirttail. "Probably," he said. "But what
worries me is not your shooting me, because after all, for people like us it's a natural death." He laid his glasses on
the bed and took off his watch and chain. "What worries me," he went on "is that out of so much and thinking about them so much, you've ended up as bad as they are. And no ideal in life is worth that much baseness." He took off his wedding ring and the medal of the Virgin of Help and put them alongside his glasses and watch.
"At this rate," he concluded, "you'll not only be the most despotic and bloody dictator in our history, but you'll shoot
my dear friend Ursula in an attempt to pacify your conscience. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If the whole world seems like it's against you, it helps to know that you've still got home. A safe place. It just takes one person - a teacher, a friend, a parent. If I didn't have you and Dad, if you hadn't made it so clear you loved me as much as you did, or if you'd said, 'yeah, why don't you do it, and put yourself out of our misery, just shut up,' I would have killed myself. I really would have. I spent most of those days wishing I were dead anyway, and what always stopped me was the fact that doing so would destroy the lives of the only people who ever cared about me. — Nenia Campbell

My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it. — Shaun Tan

It has been jestingly said that the works of John Paul Richter are almost unintelligible to any but the Germans, and even to some of them. A worthy German, just before Richter's death, edited a complete edition of his works, in which one particular passage fairly puzzled him. Determined to have it explained at the source, he went to John Paul himself. The author's reply was very characteristic: "My good friend, when I wrote that passage, God and I knew what it meant; it is possible that God knows it still; but as for me, I have totally forgotten." — Jean Paul

Bloomsbury lost Fry, in 1934, and Lytton Strachey before him, in January 1932, to early deaths. The loss of Strachey
was compounded by Carrington's suicide just two months after, in March. Another old friend, Ka Cox, died of a heart attack in 1938. But the death, in 1937, of Woolf 's nephew Julian, in the Spanish Civil War, was perhaps the
bitterest blow. Vanessa found her sister her only comfort: 'I couldn't get on at all if it weren't for you' (VWB2 203). Julian, a radical thinker and aspiring writer, campaigned all his life against war, but he had to be dissuaded by his
family from joining the International Brigade to fight Franco. Instead he worked as an ambulance driver, a role that did not prevent his death from shrapnel wounds. Woolf 's Three Guineas, she wrote to his mother, was
written 'as an argument with him — Jane Goldman

We tend to take a great deal for granted, because you feel like you're going to live forever. It's only if you lose a friend, or maybe have a near-death experience, [that] many events and people in your life suddenly attain real significance. — Brandon Lee

[Robert] Capa: He was a good friend and a great and very brave photographer. It is bad luck for everybody that the percentages caught up with him. It is especially bad for Capa. (On Capa's death in Vietnam, May, 27, 1954) — Ernest Hemingway,

...true death, my friend and counselor, who was never again going to allow me to act like such a coward...He was not going to allow me to put off until tomorrow what I should be enjoying today. He was not going to let me flee from life's battles, and he was going to help me fight the good fight. Never again, ever, was I going to feel ridiculous about doing anything. Because he was there, saying that when he took me in hand to travel with me to other worlds, I should leave behind the greatest sin of all: regret. With the certainty of his presence and the gentleness of his face, I was sure that I was going to be able to drink from the fountain of life. — Paulo Coelho

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? (Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child. — Christopher Hitchens

although we move forward through a story, the entire story is already complete - we hold it in our hands. In this sense, fiction, the great life-giver, also kills, not just because people often die in novels and stories but, more important, because, even if they don't die, they have already happened. Fictional form is always a kind of death, in the way that Blanchot described actual life. "Was. We say he is, then suddenly he was, this terrible was." That is the narrator of Thomas Bernhard's novel "The Loser," describing his friend Wertheimer, who has committed suicide. But it might also describe the tense in which we encounter most fictional lives: we say, "She was," not "She is." He left the house, she rubbed her neck, she put down her book and went to sleep. — James Wood

He had left a certain mode of life and chosen another and between that life and this a river ran, as impassable as the river of death. And now he wanted to get back madly, desperately, but he couldn't, not even though he knew that the river was nothing but the inhibitions of his own mind ... A normal man who has lived utterly alone for a long time ceases to be normal. A solitary who has cut himself off from human contact comes to have a terror of his fellow humans. A coward who had abandoned all responsibility is afraid to shoulder it again. A failure cannot trust to success. A sufferer who has been broken by life dare not be friends with it again ... It was only his own mind that kept him back but a man's mind can be his greatest friend or his greatest enemy, according as it serves or binds his will, and his was his enemy. Its terrors controlled him. He was bound hand and foot by his own weakness. It was no use. He was a good as dead. I cannot get back. — Elizabeth Goudge

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. — John Donne

In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him (Confessions IV, 10). Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving one's heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away. — C.S. Lewis

When I was a child and heard about angels, I was both frightened and fascinated by the thought of these enormous, invisible presences in our midst. I conceived of them not as white-robed androgynes with yellow locks and thick gold wings, which was how my friend Matty Wilson had described them to me
Matty was the predecessor of all sorts of arcane knowledge
but as big, dark, blundering men, massive in their weightlessness, given to pranks and ponderous play, who might knock you over, or break you in half, without meaning to. When a child from Miss Molyneaux's infant school in Carrickdrum fell under the hoofs of a dray-horse one day and was trampled to death, I, a watchful six year old, knew who was to blame; I pictured his guardian angel standing over the child's crushed form with his big hands helplessly extended, not sure whether to be contrite or to laugh. — John Banville

A collective insanity seemed to have seized the nation and turned them into something worse than beasts. The princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, was literally torn to pieces; her head, breasts, and pudenda were paraded on pikes before the windows of the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, while a man boasted drunkenly at a cafe that he had eaten the princess' heart, which he probably had. — J. Christopher Herold

You're become a good friend, Arthur. I appreciate all you've done to help me since Warren's death. If we were to put the deeds of giving on a scale, your side would plunge downward compared to the paltry things I've done for you in return.'
She had no idea what she'd done for him, awakening him to love again, inspiring him to look beyond his own needs to someone else's. He started to tell her so, but she went on.
'But I can't look at years and weeks. I have to look at souls and sales. What would God have me view as the most valued?' She imitated the gesture he'd made earlier, raising one hand as high as her chin and lowering the other to midthigh. 'Souls, Arthur.' She balled the hand beside her leg into a tight fist, lifted it, and pressed it to her heart. 'Souls matter most. Even if it means I lose my mercantile - my home - I choose to love those children. — Kim Vogel Sawyer

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stock of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: 'Stetson!
You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere! — T. S. Eliot

They say that war is death's best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thin, incessantly: 'Get it done, get it done.' So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more. — Markus Zusak

There's nothing.
Nothing to hold on to while the current takes me.
Whatever I might have had until today, I've lost.
I feel my love for her, swelling; bloating into something that's about to explode, like an abscess that's been allowed to rot for too long, but the pain drowns it so completely I know I'm never coming back out. This feeling, that you're choking and that your body is underwater, immersed in the ocean, a dense flood that overpowers your breathing abilities, and your will to survive gets drowned right along with it. And as I'm drowning I see her face and hear her voice - and it doesn't give me hope, it terrifies me. I'm terrified because I know she's going to be the death of me. I'm terrified because I know I won't be able to cope. I'm terrified because the darkness is the only true friend I've ever had and if it wants to embrace me I don't have the power to make it stop. — Kady Hunt

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader-- if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors-- floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. — George Eliot

But maybe my expression isn't as bad as I think it is. Maybe Galen's just really good at reading me. Or maybe he's just being overly mushy himself. He is a tad protective, after all. I glance at Toraf, who's sitting on the other full-size bed next to Rayna. And Toraf is already looking at me. When our eyes meet, he shakes his head ever so slightly. As if to say, "Don't do it." As if to say, "You really don't want to do it." As if to say, "I know you really want to do it, but I'm asking you not to. As a friend."
I huff, then adjust myself in Galen's death grip. It's not fair that Galen and Toraf silently ask me to accept this. That my mother is putty in Grom's proficient hands. That her temperature barely raised a degree around my dad, yet Grom, within an hour of reunion, has her titanium exterior dissolving like Alka-Seltzer in hot water. I can't accept it. Won't. Will. Not. — Anna Banks

It is a terrible thing to witness death by violence, a thousand times worse to hold a man's life in your own hands and to willingly, consciously take it from him. Acknowledged or not, something noble has been scoured from your insides, never to be replaced. You saved a friend's life, and there lies ample justification. But never peace, never balance, never the same. At least that is how it seems to me. — Andrew Levkoff

And then we come to Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian claim that he was God and man, that there were two natures in that one Person. Well, we must spend at least a night on this. Let's have this out. Is that possible? Is it conceivable? Then there is this question of Jesus' death on a cross on Calvary's hill, the great doctrine about something called "atonement" - that one died for others, that he made himself a substitute, and so on. So we take this up. Is this even moral? Is it conceivable? Can it happen? We spend a whole night arguing about that. And the whole time we think we have been discussing Christianity. There is a sense, of course, in which we have, but there is another sense in which we have not, because, my friend, you can not only go to your grave but you can even go to hell just doing that. Christianity, primarily, is not a discussion about ideas. It is a discussion about you. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The latter had developed into as close a friend as Arun had these days, except for Xin of course, filling the gap that Hortez's death and Springer's estrangement had created, but Del-Marie had stayed behind to negotiate with the natives on Tallerman-3 after the Legion had swept the New Empire forces from the system. — Tim C. Taylor

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother. — John Steinbeck

And in this moment, I realize one reason it's so great to have a best friend is sometimes, like right now, Cal and I are thinking the very same thing. — Kimberly Willis Holt

I lit a fire and sat there in my rocking chair. We lit a candle for him. It was as simple as that. I knew that what I had done may have been a catalyst in Danny's death, but I also knew that there was really nothing else I could have done. I can never really lose that feeling. I wasn't guilty, but I felt responsible in a way. It's part of what I do. Managing the band and taking care of the music is very painful at times. It's a sad story. A moment I will never forget, years I can never replace, music the world will never hear, all gone in the turning of a second. — Neil Young

I am so sorry to hear of Asher's passing. I will miss his scientific insight and advice, but even more his humor and stubborn integrity. I remember when one of his colleagues complained about Asher's always rejecting his manuscript when they were sent to him to referee. Asher said in effect, 'You should thank me. I am only trying to protect your reputation.' He often pretended to consult me, a fellow atheist, on matters of religious protocol.

{Charles H. Bennett's letter written to the family of Israeli physicist, Asher Peres} — Charles H. Bennett

I wanted to tell Ren the truth. I wanted to say that he was the best friend I'd ever had. That I was sorry about the way I had treated him. I wanted to tell him ... that I loved him. But I couldn't say anything. My throat was closed up, probably swollen from snake venom. All I could do was look at him as he knelt over me.
That's okay. Looking at his gorgeous face one last time is enough for me. I'll die a happy woman.
I was so tired. My eyelids were too heavy to keep open. I closed my eyes and waited for death to come. Ren cleared a space and sat down near me. Pillowing my head on his arm, he pulled me onto his lap and into his arms. I smiled.
Even better. I can't open my eyes to see him anymore, but I can feel his arms around me. My warrior angel can carry me in his arms up to heaven.
He squeezed my closer to his body and whispered something in my ear that I couldn't make out. Then darkness overtook me. — Colleen Houck

People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend. — Jim Morrison

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family's past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant's indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one. — Gary Shteyngart

You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by- — Connie Willis