After You Died Quotes & Sayings

You could have dies later on, you could have died after peace had been declared. But, in any case, you were going to die. — Paulo Coelho

Is that all?" asked Flambeau after a long pause. "Have we got to the dull truth at last?"
"Oh, no," said Father Brown.
As the wind died in the most distant pine woods with a long hoot as of mockery Father Brown, with an utterly impassive face, went on:
"I only suggested that because you said one could not plausibly connect snuff with clockwork or candles with bright stones. Ten false philosophies will fit the universe; ten false theories will fit Glengyle Castle. But we want the real explanation of the castle and the universe. But are there no other exhibits?"
Craven laughed, and Flambeau rose smiling to his feet and strolled down the long table.
[Ch.6] — G.K. Chesterton

On the flight over to Chicago, I thought of a story Mom had once told me from her days as a pediatric nurse.
"There was this little boy I was taking care of," she said "and he was terminally ill,and we all knew it,but he kept hanging on and hanging on. He wouldn't die, it was so sad.
And his parents were always there with him,giving him so much love and support,but he was in so much pain,and it really was,time for him to go.
So finally some of us nurses took his father aside and we told him, 'You have to tell your son it's okay for him to go. You have to give him permission.' And so the father took his son in his arms and he sat with him in a chair and held on to him and told him over and over, that it was okay for him to go,and,well,after a few moments,his son died. — Anthony Rapp

Have you heard about the morning after pill, or what I like to call breakfast in bed. Well have you heard about how some of the girls who have taken have died a few days later? Talk about two birds, looks like I will be going to the game this weekend boys. — Daniel Tosh

Mama said it's probably because of Suzanne, and that you are never the same after a child dies. That made me wonder what she was like before Clover died, because I don't think I really knew my own mother until I had children, and if she was different before, I don't remember. — Nancy E. Turner

New teachers were just a part of life, for a few days after one arrived, squawks of interest were emitted from various corners, but then they died away as the teacher was absorbed like everyone else ... before you knew it, the fresh ones seemed to have been teaching there forever too, or else they didn't last very long, and were gone before you'd gotten to know them. — Meg Wolitzer

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed. — Ernest Hemingway,

I think it would be funny if you died of full blown AIDS. then I can take a crap on your grave after they bury you. — Nickolaus Pacione

Several died the day the bomb was dropped. Some lived six months after the explosion but died anyway. They were all lost. It was so long ago, young man. To you it is a history story. To me it is my life. — Joseph G. Peterson

Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He tell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and birds and trees, or your face if you'd looked into its dulling mirror
and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after awhile, became dull then dusty, then dried. — Ralph Ellison

When Ma died, I didn't know how to go on, either. I don't know how. I don't feel the same know, not exactly. Now that I see that one day comes after another and you get through them one measure at a time. But I'd like to go, not like Fonda Nye, I don't want to die, I just want to go, away, out of the dust. — Karen Hesse

As time passes, the cast and crew go the way of all flesh, though their celluloid echoes remain--walking, talking, fighting, fucking. After enough time, every person you see onscreen will have died, transformed through the magic of cinema into a collection of visible memories: light on a screen, pixels on a videotape, information on a DVD. We bring them back every time we start a movie, and they live again, reflected in our eyes. It's a cruel sort of immortality, I guess, though it probably beats the alternative. — Gemma Files

After you died I realized that
I never really like hunting.
I just like hanging out with you. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique. — Neil Gaiman

After you died I could not hold a funeral,
And so my life became a funeral. — Han Kang

Can you remember another time when your chest felt like this?"
My fingers splayed across my aching chest as I carefully pondered her
question. Then I nodded vigorously as I remembered. Tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked as I whispered hoarsely, "Yes, I do remember.After my husband died, it hurt like this. My chest felt full and heavy, and I thought then, Oh, this is what it feels like to have your heart break. — Mary Potter Kenyon

My mother died yesterday, yesterday many years ago. You know, what amazed me the most the next day after her leaving was the fact that the buildings were still in place, the streets were still full of cars running, full of people who were walking, seemingly ignoring that my whole world has just disappeared.
(rough translation) — Marc Levy

I'll impose upon you the same arrogance that was imposed on me, and on my mother, my grandmother, my grandmother's mother: all the way back to the first human born of another human being, whether he liked it or not. Probably, if he or she had been allowed to choose, he would have been frightened and answered: No, I don't want to be born. But no one asked their opinion, and so they were born and lived and died after giving birth to another human being who was not asked to choose, and that one did likewise, for millions of years, right down to us. — Oriana Fallaci

She died."
I had to prompt him.
"Soon after?"
"In the early hours of February the nineteenth, 1916." I tried to see the expression on his face, but it was too dark. "There was a typhoid epidemic. She was working in a hospital."
"Poor girl."
"All past. All under the sea."
"You make it seem present."
"I do not wish to make you sad."
"The scent of lilac."
"Old man's sentiment. Forgive me."
There was a silence between us. He was staring into the night. The bat flitted so low that I saw its silhouette for a brief moment against the Milky Way.
"Is this why you never married?"
"The dead live."
The blackness of the trees. I listened for footsteps, but none came. A suspension.
"How do they live?"
And yet again he let the silence come, as if the silence would answer my questions better than he could himself; but just when I had decided he would not answer, he spoke.
"By love. — John Fowles

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed. — Carol Rifka Brunt

Graves aren't for the dead. They're for the loved ones the dead leave behind them. Once those loved ones have gone, once all the lives that have touched the occupant of any given grave had ended, then the grave's purpose was fulfilled and ended. I suppose if you looked at it that way, one might as well decorate one's grave with an enormous statue or a giant temple. It gave people something to talk about, at least. Although, following that logic, I would need to have a roller coaster, or maybe a Tilt-A-Whirl constructed over my own grave when I died. Then even after my loved ones had moved on, people could keep having fun for years and years. Of course, I'd need a slightly larger plot. — Jim Butcher

Michael had taken over the Apollo cabin after Lee Fletcher died in battle last summer. Michael stood four-foot-six with another two feet of attitude. He reminded me of a ferret, with a pointy nose and scrunched-up features - either because he scowled so much or because he spent too much time looking down the shaft of an arrow. "It's our loot!" he yelled, standing on his tiptoes so he could get in Clarisse's face. "If you don't like it, you can kiss my quiver!" Around the table, people were trying not to laugh - the Stoll brothers, Pollux from the Dionysus cabin, Katie Gardner from Demeter. Even Jake Mason, the hastily appointed new counselor from Hephaestus, managed a faint smile. Only Silena Beauregard didn't pay any attention. — Rick Riordan

After Arran died we could've fallen apart. But we didn't. Because you held it together. "Arran Lives" - you remember that?"
"I remember."
"He lived in you, Max. You done well. I like you. You're cool. — Charlie Higson

But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. — Ernest Hemingway,

Body bomb,' he said. All stopped. It was impossible to know who the man was or what brought him to that place, and it was hard to fathom because a moment is never long enough to account for tragedy when you are in it. Grief is a practical mechanism, and we only grieved for those we knew. All others who died in Al Tafar were part of the landscape, as if something had sown seeds in that city that made bodies rise from the earth, in the dirt or up through the pavement like flowers after a frost, dried and withering under a cold, bright sun. — Kevin Powers

Mom and Dad were killed in a car accident on their way home from the tournament." Mr. Terupt's eyes were moist, but he kept going. "Fortunately, I was headed to college, which was the best place for me. Wrestling saved my life. The challenge it provided kept me going when I could have easily given up. I have no brothers or sisters, or any other extended family, so I was alone after my parents died. You saw that last year at the hospital. But now I have all of you. Sometimes answers come at unexpected times, in unexpected ways and unexpected places. I never — Rob Buyea

You know, hon, after Stephie died, we never really talked about her." she says, her hands tight around the cart handle. "There's a lot of pain there. Still. I guess we feel like we failed her. Like maybe if we were home instead of away at college, we could've done something to fix her. Something my patents and the doctors and her boyfriend missed. Sometimes I think I don't have the right to talk about her. Like at the end, I don't know her well enough to say anything. So much of her life became secret. She spent all of her time with her boyfriend, and when she was home, her nose was buried in her diary. I swear that diary was her best friend, even more than Megan."
"Did you ever read it?" I ask.
"No."
"Not even after she died?"
Aunt Rachel shakes her head, removing an eggplant from the middle row and pressing her fingers against its flesh. "To this day, I don't know if I would've, either. We never found it, Delilah. It's like she just ... took it with her. — Sarah Ockler

And then I get up because it is the only thing I can do. I step out of the ditch and brush the ants off because it is the only thing I can do. I follow Randall around the house because it is the only thing I can do; if this is strength, if this is weakness, this is what I do. I hiccup, but tears still run down my face. After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying. Crying ain't going to change anything. We never stopped crying. We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked out of my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run. — Jesmyn Ward

Everybody thinks that you go to Africa and you build a school, or you teach English, or you build a hospital. But actually all you need to do is play football with kids for six months and then after they've trusted you, you tell them about the truth of Aids, and that their grandmother didn't die from witchcraft, she died from Aids. And that's the biggest difference you can make. — Tom Hiddleston

Reading is the first to go, my mother used to say, meaning that it was a luxury the brain dispensed with under duress. She claimed that after my father died she never again picked up anything more demanding than the morning paper. At the time I had thought that was sort of melodramatic of her, but now I found myself reading the same paragraph six times over, and I still couldn't have told you what it was about. — Anne Tyler

After you died, I kept your wardrobe locked, with all your clothes inside, all your lovely ties. The scent of you. I sat inside this wardrobe when I missed you so much. — Trudi Kanter

We all die someday," Nick muttered as he moved off into the darkness.
"Yeah, but I'd rather my obituary didn't lead with 'He broke into a jail museum and then died,'" Digger grumbled as he trailed after.
"At least it would read 'with his friends,'" Doc added.
"If I wanted to die with you jokers, I would have done it in Afghanistan!"
Nick and Owen both stopped and wheeled on Doc and Digger. "Will you at least pretend that you care we're doing something illegal here?" Nick hissed.
Doc and Digger muttered apologies, and they carried on. — Abigail Roux

That fall, after the summer when they both died, she and my father, there was a point when I wanted to say to them, All right, you have died, I know that, and you've been dead for a while, we have all absorbed this and we've explored the feelings we had at first, in reaction to it, surprising feelings, some of them, and the feelings we're having now that a few months have gone by--- but now it's time for you to come back. You have been away long enough. — Lydia Davis

Oh, you don't know what this means to me," he said brokenly at last. "I hadn't any picture of him. And I'm not like other folks . . . I can't recall a face . . . I can't see faces as most folks can in their mind. It's been awful since the Little Fellow died. . . . I couldn't even remember what he looked like. And now you've brought me this . . . after I was so rude to you. Sit down . . . sit down. I wish I could express my thanks in some way. I guess you've saved my reason . . . maybe my life. Oh, miss, isn't it like him? You'd think he was going to speak. My dear Little Fellow! How am I going to live without him? I've nothing to live for now. First his mother . . . now him. — L.M. Montgomery

I know after all the awful places you've had to go, it's hard to imagine how good heaven can be, but I've seen it, and no words can describe it ... It's worth it all. We've both lost a parent, we've been beaten and bruised, and we've done through hell together. I even died. And I can tell you ... giving up everything to serve God is worth it all. — Bryan Davis

In John's Gospel chapter 11, after Lazarus has died, he comes to be with Martha and Mary, the sisters. Martha says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," and Jesus rebukes her. Then Mary comes up and says, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," and Jesus just weeps with her. Same words - by no means the same response. Why? Because Jesus always gives you what you need, and he knows better than you what that is. He's the Wonderful Counselor. — Timothy Keller

I'm burning, after all, even if it's not for my convictions. Does flesh charring off at the bone hurt less when you know you are right, even though everyone thinks you are wrong?
That line of reasoning leads me right to Andrew.
And then it's a fast beeline to thinking of Delia.
I don't think anyone has ever died of unrequited love. I wonder if I'll be the first. — Jodi Picoult

Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it bring to you a magnificent picture of the pristine world, - great seas and other skies, - a world of accentuated crises, that sloughed off age after age, and rose fresher from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine solidified sunshine? What leaf did it have? What blossom? What great wind shivered its branches? Was it a giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth blistered in ravines and dells? That's the witchery of amber, - that it has no cause, - that all the world grew to produce it, maybe, - died and gave no other sign, - that its tree, which must have been beautiful, dropped all its fruits, and how bursting with juice must they have been - — Harriet Prescott Spofford

And I think she works so much becasue she can be in control of it, you know?' I said. She nodded. 'It makes her feel, I don't know, safe.'
I can understand that,' Delia said softly. 'Losing someone can make you feel very out of control. Totally so.'
I know,' I said. 'But it's not really fair. Like, after my dad died, I wanted to be okay for her. So I was. Even when I had to fake it. But now, when I really do feel okay, she's not happy with me. Because I'm not perfect anymore.'
Grieving doesn't make you imperfect,' Delia said quietly, as Bert came back out to the van, adjusting one of the carts inside. 'It makes you human. We all deal with things differently. — Sarah Dessen

Someone did a study on the cell phone calls made from the Twin Towers as they fell. The question: Was there any pattern in what people said? The researcher expected they would find repeated SOSes - pleas for life, asking for absolution - but there was remarkably little of that. Instead, what the people said over and over again as they died, what they sent out across the sea of static: I love you. These words, when said sincerely, have the capacity to right our wrongs, and live on long after we have gone back to being stars. — Rosie O'Donnell

Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life: the voice of God that whispers to it: You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet. and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you! — Charles Kingsley

I wasn't trying to reach England. or Paris. I thought that if I made the broadcast powerful enough, my brother would hear me. That I could bring him some peace, protect him as he had always protected me."

You'd play your brother's own voice to him? After he died?"

"And Debussy."

Did he ever talk back?"

The attic ticks. What ghosts sidle along the walls right now, trying to overhear? She can almost taste her great-uncle's fright in the air.

"No," he says. "He never did. — Anthony Doerr

No!" She headed back to her tent. "Leave me, dragon. I never want to see you, or your family, again. Ever!"
Danelin glanced at Brastias. "Family?"
"Don't ask."
The dragon silently watched Annwyl's retreating form. He began chanting and flame surrounded him. That's when Brastias wondered if he would die this day. The flames grew, enveloping the beast, but eventually the flames died away, leaving a very large, very naked man.
With a growl, he followed after Annwyl, disappearing into the tent after her.
"So they can shape-shift then?" Danelin asked quietly.
"Seems so."
"Should we go after him?"
Brastias looked at Danelin. It took him awhile, but he'd finally figured out what he'd just witnessed. A lover's quarrel. Leave it to Annwyl. — G.A. Aiken

THERE ARE TIMES when just waking up can feel like the hardest thing anyone could ever ask you to do. The first morning after your child has died, perhaps. Or after the man you adore has walked out. You would give anything, certainly the rest of your life, to stay down in the darkness of not knowing.
It never happens, though, does it? You always come back to yourself. The world is still there. You are still there... — Sharon Bolton

Quentin did not answer, staring at the window; then he could not tell if it was the actual window or the window's pale rectangle upon his eyelids, though after a moment it began to emerge. It began to take shape in its same curious, light, gravity-defying attitude
the once-folded sheet out of the wistaria Mississippi summer, the cigar smell, the random blowing of the fireflies. "The South," Shreve said. "The South. Jesus. No wonder you folks all outlive yourselves by years and years and years." It was becoming quite distinct. He would be able to decipher the words soon, in a moment; even almost now, now, now.
"I am older at twenty than a lot of people who have died," Quentin said. — William Faulkner

He recalls that the room went 'icy cold' as his patient Catherine strangely began to channel messages from Dr Weiss's own deceased family members; things she could not have possibly known. "She didn't know anything about me," Dr Weiss says. "I didn't even have diplomas in my office. This was before the internet, and she's telling me "You're Father's here and your son." Dr Weiss remembers his shock that a stranger shared so many facts about his life, including that his Father had tragically died from a heart condition. "She tells me my daughter is named after my Father..which she is, and it is an unusual name. She said, "Your Father is here; he died from his heart." And she went into other medical details. "I'm thinking, "What is this? How does she know this?" My Father never had an obituary. — Tessy Rawlins

Usually, people die unknowingly. Come to think of it, can you die knowingly? Putting it akwardly: We are died as we are delivered. Nobody delivers himself on this planet, just as nobody dies himself off it. So dying is hard to define. The most satisfactory idea is that of a struggle near the exit, after which you are let through. — Bert Keizer

We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. Augustus Waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He died after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim - as you will be - of the universe's need to make and unmake all that is possible. — John Green

What bloody man is that, sir?" I tossed the paper in the grate, though there was no fire on this warm summer day. "Bartholomew, you are quoting from Macbeth, did you know? King Duncan in the first scene, which is ominous. He died rather horribly soon after. — Ashley Gardner

Remember this. Bear Bryant retired at age 69, and he died 28 days after he stopped coaching. If you don't have something, and a purpose in your life, you're gonna die. — Lou Holtz

Who wishes that there was a permanent, unalterable celestial despotism that subjected us to continual surveillance and could convict us of thought-crime, and who regarded us as its private property even after we died? How happy we ought to be, at the reflection that there exists not a shred of respectable evidence to support such a horrible hypothesis. And how grateful we should be to those of our predecessors who repudiated this utter negation of human freedom. There were many people long before Darwin or Einstein or even Galileo who saw through the claims of the rabbis and priests and imams. In earlier times, such repudiation often involved extraordinary courage. The ensuing pages will, I hope, introduce you to some of those who manifested this quality. — Christopher Hitchens

He let go of the rope one hand at a time and latched onto Lisa's hands. Her fingernails dug into his wrists, but her grip was strong after a summer of lifting girls into the air. It was a tug of war battle between his friends and Shawn's ghost. The wind died down as Shawn gathered all of his energy to pull on Mike. Even though he was terrified of what was happening, Mike knew that Shawn wasn't trying to hurt him. After all these years, he was still trying to find a way out. Shawn wanted to go home too, and he saw the hope of being rescued falling away.
"Shawn! Please! Let me go!" Mike called over the dying wind, "I'll get you help! We'll get you out! Just please! Let me go!"

- Saving Hascal's Horrors — Laura Smith

You're a religious man, ... You believe in God and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, 'What have you done?' there will be many answers. You will say, 'I became a jeweler.' Another will say, 'I smuggled coffee and American cigarettes.' Another will say, 'I built houses.' But I will say, 'I didn't forget you.' — Simon Wiesenthal

When you lay down your life for what you are after you've died, you're clean. — John De Ruiter

How can we continue to have festivities after so many have died? (Rowena)
The same way we managed to laugh while we were in prison. You have to, otherwise you will go mad from the grief. Sometimes it helps to shout. Let the angels hear your rage. (Stryder) — Kinley MacGregor

Mister Geoffrey, my experiment shows that the dynamo and the bulb are both working properly," I said. "So why won't the radio play?"
"I don't know," he said. "Try connecting them here."
He was pointing toward a socket on the radio labeled "AC," and when I shoved the wires inside, the radio came to life. We shouted with excitement. As I pedaled the bicycle, I could hear the great Billy Kaunda playing his happy music on Radio Two, and that made Geoffrey start to dance.
"Keep pedaling," he said. "That's it, just keep pedaling."
"Hey, I want to dance, too."
"You'll have to wait your turn."
Without realizing it, I'd just discovered the difference between alternating and direct current. Of course, I wouldn't know what this meant until much later.
After a few minutes of pedaling this upside-down bike by hand, my arm grew tired and the radio slowly died. So I began thinking, "What can do the pedaling for us so Geoffrey and I can dance? — William Kamkwamba

When I thought you'd died - "
"Don't say it," she choked out. "You don't have to relive that."
"No," he said. "I do. I have to tell you. It was the first time - even after all these years of expecting my own death - that I truly knew what it meant to die. Because with you gone ... there was nothing left for me to live for. I don't know how my mother did it."
"She had her children," Kate said. "She couldn't leave you."
"I know," he whispered, "but the pain she must have endured ... "
"I think the human heart must be stronger than we could ever imagine."
Anthony stared at her for a long moment, his eyes locking with hers until he felt they must be one person. Then, with a shaking hand, he cupped the back of her head and leaned down to kiss her. His lips worshiped hers, offering her every ounce of love and devotion and reverence and prayer that he felt in his soul.
-Anthony & Kate — Julia Quinn

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be. — Margaret McMullan

You would be amazed how many magicians have died after being bitten by mad rabbits. It's far more common than you might think.
-Angela the Herbalist — Christopher Paolini

Ma'alesh; no matter; never mind; what can you do but accept things as they are? Ma'alesh, your pot overturned in the fire; ma'alesh, your prize mare died; ma'alesh, you lost all your possessions and half your family. The word was the everyday essence of Islam - which itself, after all, means submission. — Laurie R. King

A lady?' Jem raised his head. His face as scarlet. 'After all those things she said about you, a lady?'
'She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different than mine, maybe ... son, I told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'd have made you go read to her-I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see through it no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.' (p.112) — Harper Lee

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone
every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL. — Claire Messud

L.A. kills people.' Jacaranda said. 'You're lucky you're leaving. You'll be able to write.'
She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins. She was getting too thin, even for the modeling ... Jacaranda died last winter when the flowering trees were bare. You couldn't even tell which ones once cried the purple blossoms she named herself after. — Francesca Lia Block

Do you see that patch of blue in the sky, fighting to be seen through the clouds?"

"Yes." She nodded, but her brows were scrunched in obvious confusion as to what his point would be.

"That was my life when I met you. After Mellie died, my life was a constant rainy day. I couldn't imagine the sun ever shining again. Then I met you, and the dark clouds started to drift away. I could see blue skies again and they were pushing out the clouds. As I got to know you, there were more blue skies and sunshine in my life. — Leah Atwood

When 'Carmen' premiered in 1875, it was panned by the critics. It survived 45 performances. It was called a musical and moral outrage. After Bizet died, at age 37, 'Carmen' became wildly popular. If you believe in your creation, and the rest of the world is laughing or yelling 'Boo,' don't give up. — Karen DeCrow

Do you think I could bear to live on after you died? Oh, Lyra, I'd follow you down to the world of the dead without thinking twice about it, just like you followed Roger; and that would be two lives gone for nothing, my life wasted like yours. No, we should spend our whole lifetimes together, good long busy lives, and if we can't spend them together, we ... we'll have to spend them apart. — Philip Pullman

A story in a book has its own intentions, even if unknowable to the virgin reader, who just lollops along at her own pace regardless of the author's strategies, and gets where she will. After all, a book can be set aside for weeks, or for good. (Burned in the grate.) Alternatively, a story can be adored for centuries. But it cannot be derailed. A plot, whether abandoned by a reader or pursued rapturously, remains itself, and gets where it is headed even if nobody is looking. It is progressive and inevitable as the seasons. Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer. — Gregory Maguire

It's a strange experience, dying. People talk about how it creeps over you like a warm blanket. That's not true. It starts out warm, but then it hits you like a bucket of icy water after stepping out of a sweat lodge. Then it's all black like a void. I would know. I died and lived to tell about it. — Morgan Chalfant

It's got you thinking - you've never really known anyone who's died of natural causes, have you? Parents and grandparents, plus friends and neighbors and casual lovers, they've all left you too early, and in such ghastly ways. Cancers and violence, accidents and congenital defects, aneurysms of the brain and psyche. You've heard of people who've slipped peacefully away in their sleep, or in their favorite easy chairs, after ripe octogenarian lives, but suspect they must be mythical, in the company of unicorns and mermaids. If you didn't know better, you'd think there was a deliberate methodology behind it all, a gradual pattern of calamity spiraling inward until, at last, you're the only one left to be dealt with. You could be expected to think that, but don't, because you still keep your wits about you, thank god - So to speak. — Brian Hodge

He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don't have the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don't have the money to pay, sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me, as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of medical care. It's things like that that keep me dreaming about Russia long after I've returned. — Audre Lorde

But after he tells you how they died, I want you to remember how they lived( ... ) — Elizabeth Fama

Don't be afraid of StarClan. They will understand about Brokentail. You will be honored by our warrior ancestors for your loyalty toy your Clanmates and for your endless courage. So many cats owe their lives to you. Cinderpelt would have died after her accident if you hadn't tended to her. And when there was greencough, you fought day and night ... — Erin Hunter

Yes. Fortunately, before I died, I put a plan into motion. I can't remember it, but I'm certain that it was brilliant."
"You know, I've said something similar myself on occasion, after a night of drinking." Kelsier rubbed his chin. "I'm free too. — Brandon Sanderson

I loved her, Eric. So much. And she died. I only get the general sense of things and they pass so quickly, like childhood smells touching you and then being gone on the breeze. But. But but but. It feels strange to be writing this down - I think I believed I could change what happened, undo it, prevent it, save her life somehow after she was already gone. Of course I couldn't. Dead is dead is dead. — Steven Hall

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

Little black and tan older dog?" Verdie asked. "Do you know who he belongs to?"
"Belonged to, not belongs. Old man Rawling died about two weeks ago. His family intended to have Pete and Joe put to sleep the day after the funeral, but they both vanished." ...
"Dickie bought that crazy bird for his wife, Mary, about six years ago. He'd promised her that someday he'd take her to a tropical island and then she got cancer and he couldn't take her so he bought her the bird. — Carolyn Brown

Any mother could tell you that a child invades her space from the moment of conception. And for years after, space does not exist. It was one of the things I had missed. I'd even yearned for it. And then Eli died, and I had all the space I had thought I wanted. Not just a little space. Outer space. Galaxies. And I'd floated in it in agony, longing for the days when there had been no such thing. — Amy Harmon

Anything you want to be, you can come be that with us. Rain or shine, no problem. It's what Mr. and Mrs. Johnston used to say to me after Mom died. — Kathleen Hale

I've loved you my whole life, Chas, from that first day you took me home after Michelle died. And I'm terrified you'll leave me or you'll stop loving me or even worse, something will happen to you. But I can't be without you anymore." He takes my hands, which are shaking wildly, and swallows.
"Today I watched Mike give away the woman he loves. I can't do that, Chas. I thought I could, I thought it would be better if you were with someone else, but I was wrong. And I swear to you, I will love you the rest of my life and nothing will ever come before you. Please, Chastity. Forgive me and marry me and have a bunch of babies with me, and I'll- — Kristan Higgins

I think for Beecher specifically, Keller was with him when his wife died. Beecher had decided after he first got into prison that he had to shut off everybody. You can't let anybody in and you have to become like them and you have to be threatening and all that. — Lee Tergesen

They're a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got alright. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blown away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."
"I suppose money's more important than love," suggest Philip. — W. Somerset Maugham

A traveling salesman was driving in the country when his car broke down. He hiked several miles to a farmhouse and asked the farmer if there was a place he could stay overnight. "Sure," said the farmer, "My wife died several years ago, and my two daughters are twenty-one and twenty-three, but they're off to college, and I'm all by myself, so I have lots of room to put you up."
Hearing this, the salesman turned around and started walking back toward the highway.
The farmer called after him, "Didn't you hear what I said? I have lots of room."
"I heard you," said the salesman, "but I think I'm in the wrong joke. — Thomas Cathcart

Well, why did you kill Jeremiah? And don't bother feeding me some story about how you just happened to wander along after he spontaneously died. I know you did this. — Cassandra Clare

A word of warning here. The events as you remember them will never be the same in your memory once you have turned them into a memoir. For years I have worried that if I turn all of my life into literature, I won't have any real life left - just stories about it. And it is a realistic concern: it does happen like that. I am no longer sure I remember how it felt to be twenty and living in Spain after my parents died; my book about it stands now between me and my memories. When I try to think about that time, what comes to mind most readily is what I wrote. — Judith Barrington

I watched 60 Minutes ... and they showed this woman, she's in every kind of..thing like that. 'This woman', they say, 'she lost her first four children
died from malnutrition
and, now, she's afraid that her new six-month-old newborn twins will suffer the same fate' ... Who's going to step in and say ... 'kick her in the cunt 'til it doesn't work', 'that woman is a sociopath! that is a sick human being!' ... How much of a sociopath do you need to be? That is the slow ritual torture-murder of children, one after another! At what point does cause-and-effect not kick in? How many bulb-headed skeletons have to go stiff in your arms?! ... 'what? this one's not working ... oh, well let's try again', one after another. At what point do you not go 'I think this is bad'? ... How many kids are you going to fuckin' kill, lady? ... If you impregnate someone under those conditions, they should abort the parents! that's sick! — Doug Stanhope

In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died' - if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator. — Amy Bloom

That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn't able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, "the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast." Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her
own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was
supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn't come back either.
And that's the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you'll always wonder if you could have gone
deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back. — Steven Kotler

1) Choose a person, older than yourself, you see frequently - not too often by approx once a week or once a month. Maybe one of your grandparents if they are still alive.
2) Every time you meet the chosen person you press your 2 pointing-fingers firmly against your eyes for 10 to 20 seconds until various colors and patterns arise.
3) Try to note or memorize the patterns and colors in connection with the context and repeat the practice every time you meet the chosen person for a as long as possible, minimum 6 months.
4) After minimum 6 months of this practice you can recall the person, virtually by pressing your eyes for a while. In the midst of the colors and pattern a sense of presence of the chosen person arrives even after the chosen person has died. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

I don't get scared very often," he said finally. "I was scared the first morning I woke up and you weren't here. I was scared when you left me after Vegas. I was scared when I thought I was going to have to tell my dad that Trent had died in that building. But when I saw you across the flames in the basement ... I was terrified. I made it to the door, was a few feet from the exit, and I couldn't leave.
"What do you mean? Are you crazy?" I said, my head jerking up to look into his eyes.
"I've never been so clear about anything in my life. I turned around, made my way to that room you were in, and there you were. Nothing else mattered. I didn't even know if we would make it out or not, I just wanted to be where you were, whatever that meant. The only thing I'm afraid of is a life without you, Pigeon."
I leaned up, kissing his lips tenderly. When our mouths parted, I smiled. "Then you have nothing to be afraid of. We're forever. — Jamie McGuire

You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. — Mitch Albom

I wait for him to do what everyone else did after my parents died. Spout of some conventional words of sympathy like, I'm so sorry. How awful. You poor thing. Terribly sad...and then run. People always do. Nobody knows what to say after the initial words of supposed comfort. Death and grief make everyone around you vanish because death and grief are intolerable. — Jessica Park

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

A couple of years before he died, I kissed my father goodbye. He said, 'Son, you haven't kissed me since you were a little boy.' It went straight to my heart, and I kissed him whenever I saw him after that, and my sons and I always kiss whenever we meet. — Terry Wogan

Grass Fires"
No ease for the boy at his keyhole,
his telescope,
when the women's white bodies flashed
in the bathroom. Young, my eyes began to fail.
In the grandiloquent lettering on Mother's coffin
Lowell had been misspelled LOVEL
The corpse
was wrapped like panetone in Italian tinfoil
Father's death was abrupt and unprotesting.
His vision was still twenty-twenty.
After a morning of anxious, repetitive smiling,
his last words to Mother were:
"I feel awful."
He smiled his oval Lowell smile ...
It has taken me the time since you died
to discover you are as human as I am ...
If I am. — Robert Lowell

By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed) - Gandalf came by. Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion. He had not been down that way under The Hill for ages and ages, not since his friend the Old Took died, in fact, and the hobbits had almost forgotten what he looked like. He had been away over The Hill and across The Water on businesses of his own since they were all small hobbit-boys and hobbit-girls. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The way I deal with arthritis is to keep moving. As long as I can play hard tennis, as long as I can ski or ride a horse - all kinds of things can come your way. As long as you can, do it. People who retire die. My dad retired and died shortly after. Just keep moving. — Robert Redford

When Doris had died so long ago, it was weeks before Mary could think clearly and remember what she was supposed to do the next minute and then the minute after that. Even though Doris had shown Mary how to get rid of the chiggers that burrowed under the skin or how to add potatoes to bread to make it heavy so it would fill a stomach faster, she had never explained how she had survived the death of a husband and the loss of a child. Parents never told their real secrets. They never let you know how they lived in the spaces between working and cooking and running after children and counting dollars. — Marisa Silver

The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog ... I decided the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this. — Mark Haddon

So, Wax," Wayne butted in. "Where did you say that bloke was who had my hat?"
"I told you that he got away after I shot him."
"I was hoping he'd dropped my hat, you know. Getting shot makes people drop stuff."
Waxillium sighed. "He still had it on when he left, I'm afraid."
Wayne started cursing.
"Wayne," Marasi said. "It's only a hat."
"Only a hat?" he asked, aghast.
"Wayne's a little attached to that hat," Waxillium said. "He thinks it's lucky."
"It is lucky. I ain't never died while wearing that hat. — Brandon Sanderson

He rolled her over, rising above her, cupping her cheek. "I wasn't lying, Loree. I've always heard the music in my heart ... but I lost the ability to do that when I went to prison. It was like the music just shriveled up and died. I thought I'd never hear it again. How could I play the violin if I couldn't hear the music? Then lately, I started going crazy because I'd hear snatches of music - when you'd look at me or smile at me. But I couldn't grab onto it, I couldn't hold it. Then last night, you told me that you loved me and I heard the music, so sweet, so soft. It scared me to hear it so clearly after I hadn't for so long.
"Tonight, I hurt you - again. I was going to let you go, Loree. I was gonna take you back to Austin. But I heard my heart break ... and I knew that's all I'd hear for the rest of my life. Don't leave me, Sugar."
Joy filled her and she brushed the locks of hair back off his brow. "I won't."
-Austin and Loree — Lorraine Heath