Brother I'm Dying Quotes & Sayings

I think about the people I know with the absolutely largest hearts, people with a stunning capacity for endurance and grace and kindness against the most screaming terrors and pains. My Mom and Dad, for example, enduring the death of their first child at six months old, the boy the brother I never met, dying quietly in his stroller on the porch in the moment that my mother stepped back inside to get a pair of gloves because the crisp brilliant April wind was filled with a whistling cutting wind....

Fifty years later after five more children and two miscarriages she is standing in the kitchen with her usual eternal endless cup of tea and I ask her: How do you get over the death of your child?

And she says, in her blunt honest direct terse kind way,
You don't.
Her face harrowed like a hawk for a moment in the swirling steam of the tea.
p112-13 — Brian Doyle

Levin felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart - that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling - they would simply have looked into each other's faces, and Konstantin could only have said, "You're dying, you're dying!" and Nikolay could only have answered, "I know I'm dying, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it. — Leo Tolstoy

The scariest time of my life was when I knew my Nana was dying. It was horrible, as there's nothing I could do to stop it. I grew up living with my Mum, brother and Nana (my mum's mum), so it felt like I lost a parent rather than a grandparent. It makes you realise the fragility of life. — Nikki Sanderson

When you've tired of me," she said softly, precisely, "Apollo will still be my brother. Will still be there for me."
"I'll never tire of you," he said, knowing with every thread of his soul that he spoke the absolute truth.
"Then prove it."
He knew what she asked with such an open and vulnerable face. Something within him shriveled and died ... he'd been on the rack too long for a penance he wasn't sure he could ever entirely pay.
"You know ... " His voice was hoarse, the croaking of a dying man. He licked his lips. "You know why I cannot. — Elizabeth Hoyt

We're at the opening of the Globe." She thought back to Daniel's words under the peach trees at Sword & Cross. "Daniel told me we were here."
"Sure,you were here," Bill said. "About fourteen years ago.Perched on your older brother's shoulder. You came with your family to see Julius Caesar."
Bill hovered in the air a foot in front of her. It was unappetizing, but the high collar around her neck actually seemed to hold its shape. She almost resembled the sumptuously dressed women in the higher boxes.
"And Daniel?" she asked.
"Daniel was a player-"
"Hey!"
"That's whay they called the actors." Bill rolled his eyes. "He was just starting out then. To everyone else in the audience, his debut was utterly forgettable. But to little three-year-old Lucinda"-Bill shrugged-"it put the fire in you. You've been quote-unquote dying to get onstage ever since.Tonight's your night."
"I'm an actor? — Lauren Kate

My brother is a screenwriter. He likes to say, 'I like to take on a genre when it's dying, because then people are ready for you to shake it up a little bit.' — Mark Waters

When the Council's icy fingers slide the photo of Sasha's wry smile and sleepy eyes across the table, I will nod my head like I always do. Then I will find her. I will honor the dying wish of her brother, whom I murdered, and protect her from myself. And then I will ask her out. — Daniel Jose Older

I cannot fail to note once again that the poor constitute the modern challenge, especially for the well-off of our planet, where millions of people live in inhuman conditions and many are literally dying of hunger. It is not possible to announce God the Father to these brothers and sisters without taking on the responsibility of building a more just society in the name of Christ. — Pope John Paul II

Even with my father and brother dying, I didn't quite process the grief. — Marc Forster

No, he focused on the one thing that he knew would keep him grounded the way the demon said he'd need to be.
"Take your brother outside as fast as you can - don't look back. Now, Dean, go!"
Sam's not dying. Not on my watch. You protect your family no matter what.
I'm coming for you, Sammy. Just hold tight.
And don't look back.
He opened his eyes. Behind him, he could hear Kat's voice muttering an incantation in a language he didn't recognize. It wasn't Latin, certainly. Since it was demon magic, it was probably some language that was even more dead than Latin.
The chanting stopped.
Dean screamed. — Keith R.A. DeCandido

He's my friend, my brother," he whispered into her shoulder. "He's dying."
"Daemon." Jaenelle gently stroked his hair. "Daemon, we have to help him. I could - "
"No!" Don't tempt me with hope. Don't tempt me to take that kind of risk. "You can't help him. Nothing can help him now."
Jaenelle tried to push back to look at him, but he wouldn't let her. "I know I promised him I wouldn't wander around Terreille, but - " Daemon licked a tear.
"You met him? He saw you once?"
"Once." She paused. "Daemon, I might be able to - "
"No," Daemon moaned into her neck. "He wouldn't want you there, and if something happened to you, he'd never forgive me. Never. — Anne Bishop

I wish Italy would stop being a crybaby. I wish he would kick his bad habit of wanting to eat pasta everywhere. I wish he would stop getting a stomachache every time he ate geleto. I wish he would learn to throw a grenade properly. I wish his older brother would stop trying to punch me. I wish-"
*babble babble babble*
"Germany ... That's impossible ... — Hidekaz Himaruya

When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands
the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper
if you've promised your dying mother
then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin
the guy who beat the biochemical rap. — Wally Lamb

I was born late - what my mother calls the last kick of a dying horse. There's three of us children, but I'm 13 or 14 years younger than my brother and sister. — Paul O'Grady

It's been forty years of terrible waste,' she said, 'a whole country of wasted lives. It's a country of big children, people being naughty behind the teacher's back, people tattling on each other, people getting their dumb certificates for being good little socialists. People submitting to the system because they're German and because it's a system. The whole thing was stupid and a lie. But they're not arrogant, not know-it-alls. They give what they have and they take me the way I am.'

The closer she came to dying, the more sure of herself she became. She'd concluded that the meaning of a life was in the form of it. There was no answering the question of why she'd been born, she could only take what she'd been given and try to make it end well. She intended to die in her mother's bedroom, in the company of her brother and her only offspring, without the indignity of a colostomy bag. — Jonathan Franzen

Vic, of course, clasped Max's hand, obviously sizing him up, doing that macho squeeze thing that drove Gina nuts. "He's younger than I remember," he said to Gina. Perfect. Thank you so much, Victor. Then, back to Max, "We met - very briefly - a few years ago. Looks like being shot has agreed with you."
"That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," Gina told the man who had just moved into first place as the most stupid of her three very stupid brothers.
"What?" Vic shrugged as he dragged over a chair. "I'm just saying - Max looks good. You know, for an older guy. What'd, ya lose weight while you were in the hospital?"
"Yes, Victor," Gina said. "They call it the Almost Dying Diet." She turned to Max. "My brother is an idiot."
"It's all right," he said, flexing his fingers - no doubt checking to make sure Victor hadn't broken his hand. — Suzanne Brockmann

You wanted strength."
"I still want it," Rhy whispered. "Every day. I wake up wanting to be a stronger person. A better prince. A worthy king. That want, it's like a fire in my chest. And then, there are these moments, these horrible, icy moments when I remember what I did ... " His hand drifted to his heart. "To myself. To you. To my kingdom. And it hurts ... ." His voice trembled. "More than dying ever did. There are days when I don't feel like I deserve this." He tapped the soul seal. "I deserve to be ... " He trailed off, but Kell could feel his brother's pain, as though it were a physical thing. — Victoria Schwab

Sometimes you must do things out of love
that devastate the senses.

This wasn't easy, Elymas. I know
blindness. I know how suddenly

the specks in the stones you can't see
become something you would die for.

From the way you grope this cloud of mist
I know you're trying to imagine

the color of the stars right now,
the blue-white shine that once

ignited your hands with power,
but can conjur only

the upturned bellies of poisoned frogs,
your mother's dying lips.

Don't you know how small
this life is? Even the stars

are just the sweat Christ shakes
from his brow. When you make crooked

the path to eternity, you send your brother
to oblivion, to the buried speck

in the midnight desert stone. This time,
no magic will save you. You

will have to find your life in the dark.
Today you will have to be led by the hand. — Tania Runyan

He'll protect me until his dying breath. He's too good. Too good for me, that's for fucking sure. I finally meet a decent, hardworking, adorable man with a chivalrous streak a mile long to boot and he ends up being my adopted brother. And a werewolf, but nobody's perfect. — Anonymous

Charlotte is a prism for my life. Without her, my existence looks pale and bleak and somewhere near the middle of the suck-meter. But around her, I see clearly that my life isn't made up of anything mediocre, but instead is some combination of the amazing and the dreadful - my brother who adores me, my parents who want what's best for me, my brother who's dying, my parents who won't understand me. It's not gray at all; it's too painfully colorful and fantastic and awful for me to see without her help. — Hannah Moskowitz

I wrote about the person I love most, my older brother, Noah. We don't live together so I wrote what I imagine he does when we're not together."
"And what is that?" prodded the stout man.
"He's a superhero who saves people in danger, because he saved me and my brother from dying in a fire a couple of years ago. Noah is better than Batman." The crowd chuckled.
"I love you, too, lil'bro. — Katie McGarry

But won't this be unfair to the people?" "Being ruler is the only thing my brother truly cares about. Only when he is brought to his knees will he repent from what he has done to me." "I see. And the completion time for this curse?" "Indefinite. As long as it takes. Oh, and by the way, Kaysan needs to have unending life. I don't want him dying and getting out of this that easily. — L.R.W. Lee

Less than twenty-four hours ago, I had a family and a home and a dreamworld I thought was as close to heaven as you could get without dying.
I have none of that now.
My brother is dead. My parents threw me out of the house - again - with barely enough to fill a small suitcase. And my dreamworld? I was right when I figured that, if God ever did exist, he turned his back on humanity centuries ago. — Erica Cameron

Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! - Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen! - and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose! — Mark Twain

So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead - being my brothers' and sisters' keeper ... And I think also understanding that Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God. — Barack Obama

All thoughts of newbloods and Maven, my brother and Cal and Kilorn are gone entirely. Even the faces that haunt me, the faces of the dead, have disappeared.Funny, now that I'm dying, my ghosts decide to leave. I wish they would come back. I wish I didn't have to die alone. — Victoria Aveyard

If all I can say is I'm not in this swamp, I'm not in this swamp then there is not a rope in front of me and there is not an alligator behind me and there is not a girl sitting at the edge eating a hot dog and if I believe that, then dying would be the only answer because then Death couldn't come and say Peachy to me anymore and after all she has a brother who believes in hope. — Tori Amos

I grew up in the Southwest Bronx. Father an accountant, mother a schoolteacher. Brother was six years older, which explains why I gobbled crystal meth at 12, smoked hashish at 13, and was shooting smack at 17, which explains how I got Hepatitis C, which was the basis of my first book, which was a humor book about dying. — Dave Barry

I'm thinking about the cat dying, Dulcie and her knife against my throat, Mrs Irvin and her St Thomas bone ... But never my sister. A brother rarely thinks about his sister. — Louis Nowra

My brother and I both used to worry about dying at 40 because our father died at 40. That probably wasn't terribly rational, since my father led a rather unhealthy lifestyle, shall we say. — Wes Craven

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

In another universe I probably came out OK, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead. — Junot Diaz

He who walking on the sea could calm the bitter waves, who gives life to the dying seeds of the earth; he who was able to loose the mortal chains of death, and after three days darkness could bring again to the upper world the brother for his sister Martha: he, I believe, will make Damasus rise again from the dust. — Pope Damasus I