Quotes & Sayings About Being Alive But Dead

Another case for the dumbness of reading, however, is that books do not contain answers, but rather pose more questions. And asking questions makes you look dumber, not smarter.
I thought Alice's Adventures in Wonderland would be a delightful romp through a child's subconscious, but while reading it I started to ask questions like "How do you really speak to other humans when our language often means the opposite of what is intended?" and "How do I really know anyone?" And so on, until I was asking the question "Why even exist at all?"
That didn't make me smarter! That made me wish for death, and being dead looks way dumber than being alive. — Dan Wilbur

For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. — D.H. Lawrence

I wouldn't call myself a coward, no way. But being buried alive is something I could never handle. The only way you'd see me being buried alive is if I was dead, man. — Usher

What I want to tell you is what I think he would tell you if he could.
Living means taking chances. Risks. Playing it safe all the time is being dead inside, even if you happen to still be breathing. people expected Connor to play it safe all the time. And when he did, he felt dead inside. I saw him take risks, and then he was the most alive person I've ever known. he would ask you to take chances. Sometimes that means getting hurt. Getting an F. Losing a game. Losing someone you love. But if you always play it safe, you lose anyway. — Ellen Hopkins

Most of being young, she had always thought, was playing a game of elimination with an army of different selves until you settled on one, usually by circumstance. But what made her grin, sitting across a starched white tablecloth from a man who seemed to actually listen to her, was the feeling that all those other selves weren't dead. They were still alive - multitudes of them, waiting inside her. — Ted Thompson

I do not claim that God is dead. I tell you. He is alive and well but in no position to offer salvation, being damned Himself for His lacrimal indifference. He was lost the moment He demanded fealty and worship before He would offer His protection. The unmistakeable bargain of a gangster. Whereas the devil is anything but indifferent. The devil is always there to help those who are ready to sin, which is another word for 'live'. — Joe Hill

No, it's just like when you're dead and you try to remember being alive, it'll be like thinking of winter on the hottest day of the year. You'll know it's true, but you won't really believe it. — Tom Perrotta

You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Nit even if you died. Alive or dead a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling you to do, perform, or say anything at all. — Michael Chabon

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms? — Dalton Trumbo

It's better being crazy because if you don't like the way it is here then you can have dreams. And if you don't like the dreams, then they come and give you shots and you don't feel anything anyway and you just drift around. Dead. Half-dead. Alive but like you're dead. You just drift around alive, but dead. And it all seems the same after a while. — Torey L. Hayden

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. — Charlie Kaufman

Only the gospel can truly save you. The gospel doesn't make good people good; it makes dead people alive. That's the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and every other world religion. All the others exhort their followers to save themselves by being good, by conforming their lives to whatever their worshiped deity is. But the gospel is God's acceptance of us based on what Christ has done, not on what we can do. — Tullian Tchividjian

I wonder if I talk like a dead man. My daughter once came home from school very excited about some lecture -this was years ago, before I died, though just right before- and she said her English teacher had talked about what the dead sound like in Dante. This funny thing about Dante's dead, which is that they know the past, and even the future, but they don't know the present. About the present they have all these questions for Dante. And that somehow is what being alive is, to be suspended in the time. She seemed to feel that really meant something. That and also that the dead know themselves better than the living do. — Rivka Galchen

For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition being, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.
Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed SOMETIMES, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer
you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. — Chad Harbach

She understands all at once, with a small shock, exactly what it is she always needed to tell Harland: being there in person is not the same as watching. You might see things better on television, but you'll never know if you were alive or dead while you watched. — Barbara Kingsolver

The Human Condition being, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not. — Chad Harbach

That's right. Endgame. The FAYZ barrier is coming down; at least that's my bet. But there's also a ninety percent chance you and me both end up dead. Ten percent chance we both actually get out alive. In which case we end up sharing a cell somewhere." He laughed. "Kind of unfair, really, what with me being evil and all, and you just so darned virtuous and heroic. — Michael Grant

Which was better: being alive (if that was the right word) but not remembering anything, or being dead? — Laurie Halse Anderson

If we really believed that those who are gone from us were as truly alive as ourselves, we could not invest the subject with such awful depth of gloom as we do. If we could imbue our children with distinct faith in immortality, we should never speak of people as dead, but passed into another world. We should speak of the body as a cast-off garment, which the wearer had outgrown; consecrated indeed by the beloved being that used it for a season, but of no value within itself. — Lydia M. Child

To them I'm simply an object from the past that they wish will disappear Then why do I exist? Why am I alive? When I thought about this I could find no answer. But as you live you need a reason otherwise it's the same as being dead, I then came to this conclusion I exist to kill every human besides myself. Fighting only for yourself living while only loving yourself If you think that everybody else simply exist to allow you to experience that feeling nothing is better then that world. As long as there are people in this world for me to kill and continue to feel that joy of living my existence will not vanish. — Masashi Kishimoto

Look, being committed doesn't make you dead, but all those months alone can make you feel that way sometimes. You never signed on for that. Embrace the moments that let you know you're alive. — Ellen Hopkins

But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of every emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that it's a half-love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.
It is possible that in order to keep love, feeling, tenderness alive, it will be necessary to feel these emotions ambiguously, even for what is false and debased, or for what is still an idea, a shadow in the willed imagination only ... or if what we feel is pain, then we must feel it, acknowledging that the alternative is death. Better anything than the shrewd, the calculated, the non-committal, the refusal of giving for fear of the consequences ... — Doris Lessing

In order to know that you're dead, you have to be conscious. . . but if you're conscious, then you're not dead. the only thing you can know is being alive, so that's eternity. — Todd Mitchell

Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring ... I think it would be ever so much better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep. Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can't help being thankful ... that they are alive, if for nothing else. — L.M. Montgomery

These multiplying societies treated the sick, aided the industrious poor, housed orphans, fed imprisoned debtors, built huts for shipwrecked sailors, and, in the case of the Massachusetts Humane Society, even attempted to resuscitate those suffering from "suspended animation," that is, those such as drowning victims who appeared to be dead but actually were not. The fear of being buried alive was a serious concern at this time. Many, like Washington on his deathbed, asked that their bodies not be immediately interred in case they might be suffering from suspended animation. — Gordon S. Wood

Memories are not dead things, but alive; they dwindle in disuse, but they harden and develop in all sorts of queer ways if they are being continually fretted. — H.G.Wells

Get up, go and be like him as much as one alive can be like the dead - without dying. Conceive him, yet be your death, too, almost. Like him be now, but only till the shadow of his end falls on the shadow of your being. — David Grossman

There are two types of spirits. One makes the transition to the spirit realm and goes on to whatever comes next. They can still come back to connect with people who are alive, but it's like dropping by for a visit, and then they go back to whatever it is they were happily doing in the next life. On the other hand, earthbound spirits - ghosts - are folks who pass but still have unfinished business. They feel like they're going to be judged for something they did wrong; or they don't know they are dead; or they are angry about being dead and not getting to finish something. They have been cheated out of life. They stay on a plane that's closer to the plane of earth, and that's why they're always at the corners of our vision and the edges of our dreams. Once they complete the process and resign themselves to the fact that their time on earth is finished and they've done what they can do, they can move to the next level. — Jodi Picoult

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

The day after we returned from Iorn Fist I woke up and I want either one of them anymore. Somewhere in between a girl I thought was long dead and a woman that was too blood thirsty for me to particularly like. But I thought about all that had happened the day before and decided that I liked being alive. So I wanted to than you for not letting me die. — Michael A. Stackpole

I," she [the Holy Spirit] opened her hands to include Jesus and Papa, "I am a verb. I am that I am. I will be who I will be. I am a verb! I am alive, dynamic, ever active and moving. I am a being verb. And as my very essence is a verb, I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs such as confessing, repenting, living, loving, responding, growing, reaping, changing, sowing, running, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning it into a dead noun or principle that reeks of rules. Nouns exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless 'I am' there are no verbs and verbs are what makes the universe alive. — Wm. Paul Young

Sometimes I feel foolish for hoping she's alive. But then I feel guilty--as if being 'realistic' is giving up.
Other times, I think the uncertainty is the worst part. Alive or dead, I just need to know...
Or maybe that's just a bullshit rationalization. Because I know the day you come here to tell me that she's dead will be the worst day of my life. — Jeff Jensen

Too many Christians are content with appearing to be a bit more moral than the people around them. But the difference between a true Christian and a non-Christian is not about subtle moral distinctions - it's the difference between being alive and being dead! — Francis Chan

On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive - the sum of the parts equal more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart. — Jodi Picoult

But, however many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive. — Richard Dawkins

Well, first of all if it wasn't for being saved by Jesus, I would not be alive. I would be dead. Some people say Jesus saved their soul ... Well, maybe Jesus saved my soul spiritually, but He also saved my life physically. Every aspect of my life today has to do with the fact that Jesus saved my life. — Lacey Mosley

...what was important, what mattered, was not the fact of being afraid, but what you did, the choices you made, when you were afraid. And maybe that was something to do with being alive--or staying dead. — Graham Gardner

He was alive and wished that he was dead, but not being dead, he was scared that he might die. — Avi

I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. — John Fowles

Waiting for the response to a query is a little like being Schroedinger's cat. You are neither 'dead' nor 'alive', but some amorphous state in between. — Pippa Jay

Swansea is a town where art is alive. If it became a cultural centre or a resort where art was fashionable and where it was always being discussed but never being created, it would be a town where art was dead ... There is no room in Swansea to be pompous without becoming ludicrous, and all the pompous aspects of Swansea are ludicrous; but the town itself, the town of windows between hills and the sea, is unforgettable. What should Swansea become? It should, I think, generate its own species and become what it is now, a town where art is alive. — Dylan Thomas

The only scorecard that ever gets tallied in the real world is how many times you walk away from the fight and leave your opponent dead in the dust. I can shoot damn straight when the occasion calls for it, but I'm not a bulls-eye expert. The difference is, I can hit a man on the other side of the street while I'm running, ducking, and dodging automatic weapons fire. Sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for shooting fast and on the move may mean you burn a little more ammo, but in the end, it's going to keep you alive a lot longer. Gunfighting isn't a biathlon. It's an ugly business that rewards dirty tricks and being faster and meaner and more ruthless than the other guy. It's the only way you're going to win. — Jack Badelaire

Gabby," Jenna cried. "It's so horrible. I can't believe this happened."
"Jenna," I said in a soothing voice, "I'm alive and okay. No worries."
She sniffled into the phone. "No, it's not that."
I waited a beat. "What?"
"The bridesmaid dresses are all wrong!" she wailed.
"Wait a second," I said. "You aren't upset over my being dead for four days?"
"I knew you'd be fine," she explained, brushing off the subject. "But these dresses? I don't know what to do. They're the wrong color, and they're hideous!" She went into a hysterical fit of tears. — Laura Kreitzer

Death doesn't frighten me, it bothers me. It bothers me for example that someone can be there tomorrow but me I am no longer there. What bothers me is no longer being alive, not being dead. — Mario Monicelli

I don't believe in funerals.

Funerals aren't for the dead. The dead are gone. They couldn't care less.

Funerals are for the living.

They're for the people trying to feel better about the things they could have said, the things they could have done for the dead while they were still alive.

The dead don't give a damn.

The dead couldn't care less about what's being said to them, about them.

Hell, they're dead.

The dead know the living aren't there for them, but for themselves. To feel better, to feel less guilty, less regretful, to feel loved, better appreciated by all the other living people who, like them, should have paid attention to the dead while it still mattered, while they were still alive.

So screw funerals.

Forget the dead.

Tend to the living.

Before it's too late.

Before they're dead — Lionel Fisher

God the horror of watching yourself from the outside as everything you know about yourself gets stripped away and demolished. Not just the loss of power over your body, but power over your mind. Rape in the deepest, most hellish sense of the word. But wait, there's a spark. Inside that hollowed out woman there's a place they can't touch. There's more to me than I thought there was. Something that no one and nothing can take away from me. They can't break me. I won't cease. I'm strong, and I am never going to go away until I've gotten what I came for. I might have been lost for awhile but I was never gone. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU? With an explosive inhalation I snap upright in bed, and my eyes fly open like coming alive after being dead and interred in a coffin. I AM Mac and I am BACK! — Karen Marie Moning

But if we begin thinking about the world being over 100 million years old, then it's absolutely by chance that you and I are sitting here alive today, while all the others are dead or have never been born. — Thor Heyerdahl