Dead Beat Quotes & Sayings

Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt like mine was about to. — Stephenie Meyer

Every time you close your eyes, regardless of where I am or where you are, I want you to remember this." His fingers laced with mine and then he pressed my hand against my own chest. "Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, alive or dead, young or old, my heart will always be with yours. Every beat you feel against your fingertips ... — Rachel Van Dyken

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

It cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of
the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to
synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat
simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes,
all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent
disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. Of them we can justly
say that they live precisely the sixty-eight or seventy-two years
allotted them on the tombstone. Of the rest some we know to be dead
though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through
the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call
themselves thirty-six. The true length of a person's life, whatever the
"Dictionary of National Biography" may say, is always a matter of
dispute. — Virginia Woolf

I not only weaken the opposition, I'm going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage. — Hun Sen

Her soul died that night under a radiant silver moon in the spring of 1918 on the side of a blood-spattered trench. Around her lay the mangled dead and the dying. Her body was untouched, her heart beat calmly, the blood coursed as ever through her veins. But looking deep into those emotionless eyes one wondered if they had suffered much before the soul had left them. Her face held an expression of resignation, as though she had ceased to hope that the end might come. — Helen Zenna Smith

They always think one
commits suicide for a reason. But it is quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what is the good of dying
intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or
vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs,cherami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood
never! Besides,
let us not beat about the bush; I love life
that is my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Such avidity has
something plebeian about it, don't you think? — Albert Camus

Born down in a dead man's town; The first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that's been beat too much 'Til you spend half your life just covering up. — Bruce Springsteen

Shawshank's good," he says. "But you can't beat the way Woody Harrelson kills zombies. He takes such joy in it."
"Uh-huh," I say, making a face. "I've always found zombies to be the least threatening of the scary monsters. I mean, come on. They're slow. They're brain-dead. They don't plot evil or try to take over the world. They just - " I put my arms out in front of me and give him my best zombie groan. I shake my head. "So not scary."
"But they just. Keep. Coming," Christian says. "You can run, you can kill them, but more of them always pop up, and they never stop." He shudders. "And they try to eat you, and if you get bitten, that's it - you're infected. You're doomed to become a zombie yourself. End of story."
"Okay," I concede, "they're kind of scary," and now I'm vaguely disappointed that we're not here to watch a zombie movie. — Cynthia Hand

And even if all that other bullshit were true, why me? What makes you think that a walking calamity such as myself would be even a fraction of a smidgen qualified to Kill people?"

"Well, you did just shiv your own uncle with a stick."

Lex shrank a little. "That's . . . different."

"And you beat up all those kids at school."

"Yeah, but - hey, that's not fair. It's not like I wanted them dead or anything."

He raised an eyebrow. "So what you're saying is that maybe you're not really as bad a kid as everyone thinks you are. — Gina Damico

Does she already have a man in White Horse? Who is he? I'll find out and scare him off. And if he doesn't scare? I'll beat him with a bat. I'll take an ax and chop him into tiny pieces. No, drag him behind my truck until he's mush. If any man in White Horse touches Candy besides me, I'll beat him until he's half dead. Then I'll let him get medical treatment and heal up, so I can beat him to death for real. — Bijou Hunter

I'm not going to entertain something that took place not three months, not six months, not a year but two years ago. I'm not going to sit up here and say anything about it, whether I did or did not do it, because I don't want to beat a dead horse talking about it. It's not going to affect me any way, shape or fashion. — Cam Newton

After the fire died down, what remained were two charred hearts, that once beat as one. — Anthony Liccione

Plan B
plan Battered and Broken
plan Boxed in
plan Bailed on and Back from the dead
plan Better luck next time
plan Balled up
plan Backtracked
plan Backhanded
plan Backward steps
plan Blackballed, Black-marked, and Blacklisted
plan B-side, Bye Bye Baby
plan Belly up and Beat down
plan Bad days ahead and Best are far Behind — Sarah Ockler

Why has he taken this job? ... For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? For himself then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing. — J.M. Coetzee

The Big L was cold crazy, A top-notch crook snatchin' pocket books from old ladies I told him, "Give up the dough, before you get smoked! Oh you broke? ( *shots* ) Now you're dead broke" My name is L and I'm from a part of town where clowns, Get beat down and all you hear is gunshot sounds 'Cause at nighttime niggas try to tax, they're sneakier than alley cats, that's why I carry gats — Big L

I have some crack sources - cops who call me, and say, "Hey, there's a dead body in Civic Park, try not to beat the homicide detectives there."
- Gabriella Giovanni, BLESSED ARE THE DEAD — Kristi Belcamino

She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthly bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

A dead heart is a dead life; keep your heart alive; let your heart beat for something unique! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

That's how religions and histories make their way into the world, not through battles and conquests, but through poems and kennings and songs, passed through generations and written down by scholars and scribes ...
After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith, start a war, change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster, topple walls, scale mountains
Hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being King of the gods, because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart. — Joanne Harris

We have all seen them circling pastures, have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing, the fences of our own backyards, and have stood amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift. But I had never seen so many so close, every limb of the dead oak feathered black; and I cut the engine let the river grab the jon boat and pull it toward the tree ... Then as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time its soft countenance the raw fleshy jowls, wrinkled and generous like the faces of the very old who have grown to empathize with everything. And I drifted away from them, reluctant, looking back at their roost, calling them what they are- transfiguring angels who pray over the leaf graves of the anonymous lost with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings. — David Bottoms

At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Then Gothmog hewed him with his black axe, and a white flame sprang up from the helm of Fingon as it was cloven. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces; and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood. — J.R.R. Tolkien

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said,
he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!
this, ... the paper's light ...
Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine
and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last! — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjoyed a last cigarette. Didn't think the view could be any more perfect until I saw that beat-up trilby. Honestly, Sixsmith, as ridiculous as that thing makes you look, I don't believe I've ever seen anything more beautiful. Watched you for as long as I dared. I don't believe it was a fluke that I saw you first. I believe there is another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world, and I'll be waiting for you there. I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars, where we first kissed.
Yours eternally, R.F. — David Mitchell

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead. — Robert Green Ingersoll

If I ever find a dead horse, I am going to beat the fucking shit out of it. — Sam Pink

There's no point in beating a dead horse. The horse will still be dead and you'll just be the tired asshole who beat a carcass. — Cheryl McIntyre

All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me. — Alice Walker

I wish I would have been there for you." He finally found his voice. "I wish I would have been there to beat up all the children who bullied you, to shoot your father dead the first time he broke one of your bones. I wish I would have been there to sweep you out of town and save you from the horrors you went through."
Her eyes widened in surprise and then immediately narrowed as she shook her head. "I didn't need to have a hero in my life, Mark. I needed to figure out how to be my own hero. I took the easy way out. I allowed small-town people to label me and then I did my very best to live up to the label they'd provided. It's taken me thirty-seven years to realize I don't need a hero. I'm all I need and I'm strong enough to build the rest of my life alone. — Carla Cassidy

O pity the dead that are dead, but cannot make
the journey, still they moan and beat
against the silvery adamant walls of life's exclusive city. — D.H. Lawrence

Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise,
your wandering silences and bright trouvailles,
dolphin let loose to catch the flashing fish ...
saying too little, then too much.
Poets die adolescents, their beat embalms them,
the archetypal voices sing offkey;
the old actor cannot read his friends,
and nevertheless he reads himself aloud,
genuis hums the auditorium dead.
The line must terminate.
Yet my heart rises, I know I've gladdened a lifetime
knotting, undoing a fishnet of tarred rope;
the net will hang on the wall when the fish are eaten,
nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future. — Robert Lowell

TO SOME I HAVE TALKED WITH BY THE FIRE
WHILE I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,
My heart would brim with dreams about the times
When we bent down above the fading coals
And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;
And of the wayward twilight companies
Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,
Because their blossoming dreams have never bent
Under the fruit of evil and of good:
And of the embattled flaming multitude
Who rise, wing above wing, flame above flame,
And, like a storm, cry the Ineffable Name,
And with the clashing of their sword-blades make
A rapturous music, till the morning break
And the white hush end all but the loud beat
Of their long wings, the flash of their white feet. — W.B.Yeats

Little Ozzie cried until he could cry no more. He could not have said just why he cried, but he cried because he knew, in some deep part of him where the knowledge would remain till he was dead, that the world was a more horrible place than he could imagine. He might think of monsters or mad dogs, but the world would beat him. It would turn the people he loved and trusted into monsters; it would reveal those meant to help him as mad dogs. He wept for himself, and he wept because he knew there would never really be anyone else to weep for him. — Gene Wolfe

Betelgeuse. Sirius. Orion. Antares. The sky is very large, and you are very small. Let the words wash
through him, the voice and its memories pass over him, shivering his skin like the touch of a ghost,
vanishing into darkness.
The Pleiades. Cassiopeia. Taurus. Heaven is wide, and you are very small. Dead, but none the less
powerful for being dead. He spread his hands wide, gripping the fence - those were powerful, too.
Enough to beat a man to death, enough to choke out a life. But even death was not enough to loose the
bands of rage.
With great effort, he let go. Turned his hands palm upward, in gesture of surrender. He reached
beyond the stars, searching. The words formed themselves quietly in his mind, by habit, so quietly he
was not aware of them until he found them echoed in a whisper on his lips. — Diana Gabaldon

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done. — Ernest Hemingway,

Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, alive or dead, young or old, my heart will always be with yours. Every beat you feel against your fingertips ... " His fingers tapped against my chest, once, twice. " ... is me calling out to you. It's you returning the call. It's us talking, communicating, bonding, sharing, Living
Kiersten, it's us living. — Rachel Van Dyken

Yiddish is the voice of exile, the tongue of ghettos, but I'll shed a tear when it joins ancient Greek and dead Latin. For gossip and insult, you can't beat Yiddish. — Linda Barnes

One saw a bird dying, shot by a man. It was flying with rhythmic beat and beautifully, with such freedom and lack of fear. And the gun shattered it; it fell to the earth and all the life had gone out of it. A dog fetched it, and the man collected other dead birds. He was chattering with his friend and seemed so utterly indifferent. All that he was concerned with was bringing down so many birds, and it was over as far as he was concerned. They are killing all over the world. Those marvellous, great animals of the sea, the whales, are killed by the million, and the tiger and so many other animals are now becoming endangered species. Man is the only animal that is to be dreaded. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

He's violent and unpredictable. He hit you once-hard. Oh, sure he saved your life later but it was in his beat interests. Plus, you have absolutely no common sense where he is concerned, and we won't even mention the dead thing. — Suzanne Johnson

A life of mere pleasure! A little while, in the spring-time of the senses, in the sunshine of prosperity, in the jubilee of health, it may seem well enough. But how insufficient, how mean, how terrible when age comes, and sorrow, and death! A life of pleasure! What does it look like when these great changes beat against it
when the realities of eternity stream in? It looks like the fragments of a feast, when the sun shines upon the withered garlands, and the tinsel, and the overturned tables, and the dead lees of wine. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It's as simple as that, and as stupid and complicated. It's terrible. It's like knowing someone you love is dead but not having the body to prove it. He loved me. I know it. — Roddy Doyle

But when I make a good [taxidermy] mount I feel like I beat God in a small way. As though the Almighty said, Let such critter be dead, and I said, 'Fuck You, he can still play the banjo. — Christopher Buehlman

Then, before Rhun charges, I leap from him, running toward the dead. His steps beat after me, and I hold out my hand. Our fingers link. The dead slather gleefully and lick their lips. It is the third night of Samhain, and we run together. — Tessa Gratton

The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the American Way of Life is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don't dig their caveman mops? They couldn't care less about the old, stiff-assed honkies who don't like their new dances: Frog, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragging across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music. — Eldridge Cleaver

Facing fear is better than running from it," he said.
"What if it's fear you can't beat?"
"Then it might be better to be dead," he answered. — David Baldacci

That was when I left her and went outside to talk to Charles. I knew I would dislike talking to Charles, but it was almost too late to ask him politely and I thought I should ask him once. Even the garden had become a strange landscape with Charles' figure in it; I could see him standing under the apple trees and the trees were crooked and shortened beside him. I came out the kitchen door and walked slowly toward him. I was trying to think charitably of him, since I would never be able to speak kindly until I did, but whenever I thought of his big white face grinning at me across the table or watching me whenever I moved I wanted to beat at him until he went away, I wanted to stamp on him after he was dead, and see him lying dead on the grass. So I made my mind charitable toward Charles and came up to him slowly. — Shirley Jackson

One of the strangest events, however, happened in the first year of Elizabeth (1558), when dyed Sir Thomas Cheney, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, of whom it is reported for a certain, that his pulse did beat more than three quarters of an hour after he was dead, as strongly as if he had been still alive. — William Shakespeare

Here I was with Barrons dead. Again.
I knew he wasn't really dead, or at least he wouldn't be for long, but my grief was too fresh and my emotions too complicated.
"How long until he - " I broke off, horrified to hear the catch of a sob in my voice.
"Why do you give a fuck?"
"I don't, I mean, I just - shit!" I turned and beat at the wall with my fists. I didn't care that my parents could hear the dull thud or that the wall shuddered beneath my blows. I didn't care what Lor thought of me. I hated Barrons being dead. Hated it. Beyond reason. Beyond my understanding.
I punched until Lor caught my bloody fists and pulled me away.
"How long?" I demanded. "I want to know! Answer me or else!"
He grinned faintly. "What, you gonna feed me bloody runes?"
I scowled. "Do you guys tell each other everything?"
"Not everything. Pri-ya sounded pretty fucking fascinating to me. Never did get all the details. — Karen Marie Moning

Older boys were allowed to beat younger ones at my 15th-century English boarding school, and every boy had to run a five-mile annual steeplechase through the sludge and rain of an October day, as horses do. We wrote poems in dead languages and recited the Lord's Prayer in Latin every Sunday night. — Pico Iyer

That night she heard the branches tapping against the house and the window frames rattle. She sat alone and thought of the geese, she could hear them out there. It had gotten cold. The wind was blowing their feathers. They lived a long time, ten or fifteen years, they said. The one they had seen on the lawn might still be alive, settled back into the fields with the others, in from the ocean where they went to be safe, the survivors of bloody ambushes. Somewhere in the wet grass, she imagined, lay one of them, dark sodden breast, graceful neck still extended, great wings striving to beat, bloody sounds coming from the holes in its beak. She went around and turned on the lights. The rain was coming down, the sea was crashing, a comrade lay dead in the whirling darkness. — James Salter

Race me back. Beat me there, and I'll tell you." I blinked. "What kind of kindergarten crap is that?" His grey eyes flashed with anger. "You want to know what it's like? Beat me down the beach." "Of all the ridiculous, immature nonsense," I said. Then I hooked a foot behind Thomas's calf, shoved him down to the sand, and took off down the beach at a dead sprint. — Jim Butcher

Think about what it would mean to fight," he said. "Say we barricade ourselves here in the hotel and refuse to leave. They come at us with their Weapon, whatever it is. Some of us are hurt, some die. We go out to meet them with whatever weapons we can find - sticks, maybe, or pieces of broken glass. We battle each other. Maybe they set fire to the hotel. Maybe we march into the village and steal food from them nad they come after us and beat us. We beat them back. In the end, maybe we damage them so badly that they're too weak to make us leave. What do we have? Friends and neighbors and families dead. A place half destroyed, and those left in it full of hatred for us. And we ourselves will have to live with the memory of the terrible things we have done. — Jeanne DuPrau

Crazy is such a misunderstood term. I like to think that I march to the beat of my own drummer. — Eva Sloan

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Did she say anything before she died?" he asked.
"Yes," the surgeon said. "She said, 'Forgive him'"
"Forgive him?" my father asked.
"I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her."
Wow.
My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love and tolerance.
She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her.
I think My Dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death.
I think my mother would have helped him.
I think I would have helped him, too.
But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.
Even dead, she was a better person than us. — Sherman Alexie

I got out of the music industry many years ago. I had a charlatan for a producer who I wanted nothing to do with. He's dead now, so I guess I can't beat that horse any more. It left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I just went on about my business doing what I do and not involving myself with record companies, except for distribution. — Leon Redbone

Walter Kaylin was great! He was outrageous, he just carried it off. He'd have this one guy killing a thousand other guys. Then they beat him into the ground, you think he's dead, but he rises up again and kills another thousand guys. — Mario Puzo

A bulger of a place it is. The number of the ships beat me all hollow, and looked for all the world like a big clearing in the West, with the dead trees all standing. — Davy Crockett

I close my eyes, and this image floats beside me.
A sweaty toothed mad man with a stare that pounds my brain.
His hands reach out and choke me, and all the time he's mumbling.
"Truth, truth."
Like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.
You push it, stretch it, but it'll never be enough.
You kick at it, beat it, it'll never cover any of us.
From the moment we enter crying,
to the moment we leave dying,
it'll just cover your face,
as you wail and cry and scream. — Tom Schulman

He could feel the strong, steady beat of Isabelle's heart.
'I thought you were dead,' she went on. 'I saw you fall down, and
I thought you were dead.'
Simon let her hold him, propping himself up on his hands. He realized that he was listing like a ship with a hole in its side, and tried not to move. He was afraid that if he did, he would fall over. 'I am dead.'
'I know,' Izzy snapped. I mean more dead than usual. — Cassandra Clare

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat; The soldier's last tattoo; No more on Life's parade shall meet; The brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground; Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards, with solemn round; The bivouac of the dead. — Theodore O'Hara

She didn't want to look ahead to the days and the months and the years with him. Here, now, in this room, it was all right, but later? Again, time couldn't stop. And she saw at last that time only stopped when you were dead ... Time was always moving and nothing could stay the same, everything was always changing, for better or for worse. And you had to change with time, with the seasons and the years, or you would be dead too, although your heart would continue to beat. — Robert Cormier

What happened, man? Gerry and Ginsberg are cold, and dead, in the ground. Kesey's stoned, and out of town. We've come to the end of the brotherhood song. The children brandish knives upon each other's throats, and their loaded 45's sit snug in lunch boxes nestled safely between Oreo cookies and a ham sandwich. Where are you now, oh ancient hipsters? Raggedy Beats beat down and broken wheel raggedy wheelchairs down ghostly geriatric wards. Where are you now, oh day-glow dreamers? Have you gotten off the bus and into your Mercedes? Did you get that second mortgage, and bear your fattened little babies? Where is that girl with flowers in her hair? Where is the man with revolution in his veins? We ask ourselves "where did we go wrong?" But there is no we. There is you, and then there is I. You do what you need to survive, And I do what I must to stay alive. We stand here Bleeding, slicing each other's wrists With the icy ridges of hardened jagged hearts, Cassandra's — Bearl Brooks

I looked around the lot. "Is he dead anywhere nearby?" I really wanted a no on this one. I'd already had my millennium quota of dead.
"You see that big bush by the Dumpster?" Jackie said.
"Yeah."
"You see that ugly-ass foot sticking out of that big bush?"
Oh boy. She was right. There was a foot sticking out of the bush. "Shit, Jackie," I said. "You didn't kill that foot, did you?"
"No, I didn't kill that foot. That's what I've been trying to tell you. Someone jacked me over. I've been sitting out here, freezing my ass off, waiting to kill that sonovabitch Cameron Brown, and someone beat me to it. It isn't fair! — Janet Evanovich

The fact that he gave her the creeps just proved she was normal. He had the flat, dead face of an item turned out by machines. His eyes were cold as marbles pressed into dough. His insides went with the surface. He could beat a man insane or take it himself, and it didn't mean a thing to him. — Walter Kaylin

The Violins waltzed. The Cellos and Basses provided accompaniment. The Violas mourned their fate, while the Concertmaster showed off. The Flutes did bird imitations ... repeatedly, and the reed instruments had the good taste to admire my jacket. The Trumpets held a parade in honor of our great nation, while the French Horns waxed nostalgic about something or other. The Trombones had too much to drink. The Percussion beat the band, and the Tuba stayed home playing cards with his landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk a blue little cup.
But the Composer is still dead. — Lemony Snicket

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

They say that the hearts of the dead are never silent. They say that they
live on, beat on, love on forever. But what of the hearts of the living? — Rachel M. Martens

If you beat a dead horse long enough,
you will eventually kill it. — Maximus Freeman

With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them. — Walt Whitman

So go out and live real good and I promise you'll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you're dead, you'll be rotted away anyway. It's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live. — Rich Mullins

Photographs of them alive and smiling would have made me cry and fall down and beat the earth with my fists; their actual dead faces only sealed me off from myself. — Russell Banks

Aelin ran for Manon, leaping over the fallen stones, her ankle wrenching on loose debris.
The island rocked with her every step, and the sunlight was scalding, as if Mala were holding that island aloft with every last bit of strength the goddess could summon in this land.
Then Aelin was upon Manon Blackbeak, and the witch lifted hate-filled eyes to her. Aelin hauled off stone after stone from her body, the island beneath them buckling.
"You're too good a fighter to kill," Aelin breathed, hooking an arm under Manon's shoulders and hauling her up. The rock swayed to the left-but held. Oh, gods. "If I die because of you, I'll beat the shit out of you in hell."
She could have sworn the witch let out a broken laugh as she got to her feet, nearly dead weight in Aelin's arms. — Sarah J. Maas

At the morgue, people were so desensitized that they would eat lunch in the glass walled room adjacent to the autopsy room. A viewing room. Because it had the best air conditioning in the building. So they would eat in there and maybe somebody would come in who had been found after being dead for three days and they would say: That is the exact purple I want for those drapes in the study. They didn't miss a beat. They could eat through anything. — David Sedaris

I wasn't different from most girls I knew. Well, except the fact I was exponentially better looking, but why beat a dead horse? — Fisher Amelie

This message (that attempting to beat the market is futile) can never be sold on Wall Street because it is in effect telling stock analysts to drop dead. — Paul Samuelson

He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead. It came from his contemplation of the church, but it had its own clarity: the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them, while the efforts of the living, with all their works and wars and great buildings, were no more than the beat of a wing against the weight of time. — Sebastian Faulks

He looked up, expecting to see a couple of EMTs bearing down on him with a stretcher, but his heart stuttered when the crowd shifted and Celida appeared. She stopped dead when she saw him, both hands flying up to cover her mouth and nose. Then she dropped her hands and raced toward him, dark ponytail streaming behind her. He watched her face crumple a second before she reached him and a different kind of pain lit up in his chest. Beat up as he was, there was no way he couldn't reach for her. He held out his — Kaylea Cross

One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys. — Holly Black

You know, we've got to be responsible about our debt. We don't want the United States to ever be a dead beat, and not be able to pay its bills, either to our soldiers who are fighting or to Social Security recipients. — Claire McCaskill

Max felt his eye twitching. He knew he should be yelling, but his limbs wouldn't move. This was what it felt like to be paralyzed with rage. Yes, he was going to do it. He was going to finally go utterly psychotic and prove the whole town right. He was going to walk over to those arrogant assholes and take the first one apart. Then he'd beat the other one to death with his dead brother's leg. He looked to his own brother. Rye would save him from his towering rage. Rye would have calming words. Rye would talk him down.
Rye's face was red as he pointed at the young cowboys. You, kill now, Max. — Sophie Oak

You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there
the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed. — Frederick Buechner

The world slowed to the beat of an ancient, ageless drum.
Celaena behold the room.
The blood was everywhere.
Before the bed, Nehemia's bodyguards lay with their throats cut from ear to ear, their internal organs spilling out onto the floor.
And on the bed ...
On the bed ...
She could hear the shouts growing closer, reaching the room, but their words were somehow muffled, as though she were underwater, the sounds coming from the surface above.
Celaena stood in the center of the freezing bedroom, gazing at the bed, and the princess's broken body atop it.
Nehemia was dead. — Sarah J. Maas

Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple. 'I won't!' said Alice. 'Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved. 'Who cares for you?' said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!' At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tired to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face. 'Wake up, Alice dear!' said her sister. 'Why, what a long sleep you've had!' So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventure in Wonderland, 1865 — Lewis Carroll

Secret to what?"
"Secret to shutting you up," he said. "I just have to beat you till you're half-dead, then give you chicken soup and"
he raised his hands
"blessed silence. — Ilona Andrews

Jesus didn't really die-someone gave him a long drug that made him look like dead, and he revived in the tomb. Answer: Roman soldiers knew how to kill people, and no disciple would have been fooled by a half-drugged, beat-up Jesus into thinking he'd defeated death and inaugurated the kingdom. — N. T. Wright

Had our hearts really become so numb that we needed dead bodies in order to feel the beat of compassion in our chests? Who am I if I need to be shocked back into my best self? — Jason Reynolds

Whatever god he adores, or even if he rejects all the gods, the man who desires to create cannot express himself if he does not feel in his veins the flow of all the rivers- even those which carry along sand and putrefaction, he is not realizing his entire being if he does not see the light of all the constellations, even those which no longer shine, if the primeval fire, even when locked beneath the crust of the earth, does not consume his nerves, if the hearts of all men, even the dead, even those still to be born, do not beat in his heart, if abstraction does not mount from his senses to his soul to raise it to the plane of the laws which cause men to act, the rivers to flow, the fire to burn, and the constellations to revolve. — Elie Faure

Edward,' she mumbled softly.
She was dreaming of me.
Could a dead, frozen heart beat again? It felt like mine was about to.
'Stay,' she sighed. 'Don't go. Please ... don't go — Stephenie Meyer

I opened my eyes and then slammed them shut because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The fire was all around us. We were in the fire. We should be dead. We would have been dead. My heart began to beat out of control before I felt his fingers on my face. Just be right here with me. Don't think about that. This is going to let me save you. I gasped. I don't want to have hope if it won't work - Ava, he chuckled, look at us. We're standing in fire. I'm getting you out of here. I can feel it. My ability. But — Shelly Crane

She say, All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy, I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me. Now if you want a dead son-in-law you just keep on advising him like you doing. She put her hand on her hip. I used to hunt game with a bow and arrow, she say. — Alice Walker

Hey, Jamie,' said Seb. 'Want a lift?'
'Hey, Seb,' Jamie responded without missing a beat 'Drop dead. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I'll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It's the silence that scares me. It's the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment. — Mark Lawrence

What is war?' I asked.
Oh, it's a messy, stupid business,' he said, 'Two sides wave flags and beat drums and shoot one another dead. It always begins this way, making speeches, talking about rights, and all that sort of thing.'
But what is it for? What do they get out of it?'
I don't know,' he said. 'To tell you the truth, I don't think they know themselves. — Hugh Lofting