Dead From The Neck Quotes & Sayings

As the sun went down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake. The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was soothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were, by the nape of the neck, and held it under in the tide of its own events, till it was drowned, and then I let it go down stream like a dead dog. Vast hollow chambers of silence stretched away on every side, and my being expanded in proportion, and filled them. Then first could I appreciate sound, and find it musical. — Henry David Thoreau

The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck. — Robert A. Heinlein

When he stood up, we suddenly turned dead-still. It was the way he held his head. He was tall and slim - and I remember thinking that any two of us could have broken his neck without trouble - but what we all felt was fear. He stood like a man who knew that he was right. 'I will put an end to this, once and for all,' he said. His voice was clear and without any feeling. That was all he said and started to walk out. He walked down the length of the place, in the white light, not hurrying and not noticing any of us. Nobody moved to stop him. Gerald Starnes cried suddenly after him, 'How?' He turned and answered, 'I will stop the motor of the world.' Then he walked out. We never saw him again. We never heard what became of him. — Ayn Rand

Your skin tastes like the Dead Sea," he whispered against my neck. I — Dannika Dark

Do you think she is?" Her voice trembled. Her heart throbbed as she waited for him to answer. "You think they've killed her?"
Every moment wrapped around Scarlet's neck, strangling her, until the only possiblbe word from Wolf's mouth had to be yes. Yes, she was dead. Yes, she was gone. They'd murdered her. These monsters had murdered her.
Scarlet pressed her palms into the crate, trying to push through the plastic. "Say it."
"No," he murmured, shoulder sinking, "No, I don't think they've killed her. Not yet."
Scarlet shivered with relief. She covered her face with both hands, dizzy with the hurricane of emotions. "Thank the stars," she whispered. "Thank you. — Marissa Meyer

TODD!" I yell again and I reach him and his Noise opens even farther and wraps around me like a blanket and I'm grabbing him to me, grabbing him to me like I'll never let him go and he calls out in pain but his other arm is grabbing me back -
"I thought you were dead," he's saying, his breath on my neck. "I thought you were dead."
"Todd," I say and I'm crying and the only thing I can say is his name. "Todd. — Patrick Ness

Getting two-inch silver chain chokers around the neck of a guy, especially Shane, proved to be more of a problem.
Shane held the jewelry at arm's length, dangling it like a dead rat. "No way in hell am I caught dead or alive wearing that."
"Oh, come on, just this once," Eve said. "Protects your neck. As in your arteries and veins? That's kind of crucial, right?"
"Thanks for the thought, but it doesn't go with my shoes. — Rachel Caine

I love it. Reminds me of you." "It reminds me of a man I don't like." I never want to hear it again. "I'm sorry." He nips at my neck, drawing his tongue up the length to my jawbone. "My arse is dead. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Warren could see humans further up the street, that had appeared to be dead, now rising to their feet and swaying drunkenly. One man had a huge chunk of flesh bitten from his face and another from his neck, yet he moved forward even though he appeared to be in enormous pain. Many of the newly changed screamed and contorted their limbs and faces in anguish. They moaned in pain almost continuously. — Joseph M. Chiron

Many of our tribe went to the cliff each night to count the number killed during the day. They counted the dead otter and thought of the beads and other things that each pelt meant. But I never went to the cove and whenever I saw the hunters with their long spears skimming over the water, I was angry, for these animals were my friends. It was fun to see them playing or sunning themselves among the kelp. It more fun than the thought of beads to wear around my neck. — Scott O'Dell

If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let women think and feel that an unwanted child or an oversize family is wrong
not ethically wrong, not against the rules, but morally wrong, all wrong, wrong like a thalidomide birth, wrong like taking a wrong step that will break your neck
if we can get feminine and human morality out from under the yoke of a dead ethic, then maybe we'll begin to get somewhere on the road that leads to survival. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The over-weight and out of shape guy who owned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn't afford to hire someone to clean out his gutters. Now he was dead with what looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped. He'd taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping - complete with rock garden. But hey, his fucking gutters were clean. — Diana Rowland

I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic. — Joe Dunthorne

According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that's that ... The neck is a dead give-away. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to if it had a neck. — Nora Ephron

How unnatural the imposed view, imposed by a puritanical ethos, that passionate love belongs only to the young, that people are dead from the neck down by the time they are forty, and that any deep feeling, any passion after that age, is either ludicrous or revolting! — May Sarton

Jesus. I had a dream last night too.
You had.
I dreamt that my Grandma had just died yesterday.
Dear God.
And she had died long before I was born.
He looked at me with astounded eyes, and felt his neck, and then he patted my knee. Aisy son, he said.
Why did I dream her?
Because you never met her. The dead you never met die a little bit every day in your head. — Dermot Healy

I was finally beginning to perceive that no matter how many dead people I might see, or people at the instant of their death, I would never manage to grasp death, that very moment, precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there's nothing else to understand, or else you are not yet dead, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it's coming, and then it's still coming, and then it's already over, without ever having come. — Jonathan Littell

Your Mom's Car. Think about that. Try to wrap your brain around the supernatural and spiritual implications that the name bears down you. Your Mom's Car, holding its hand out straight, fingers curled, a zombie reaching for your neck. — Dan Chaon

The pyre was a ditch 50 yards long, six yards wide and three yards deep, a welter of burning bodies. SS soldiers, stationed at five-yard intervals along the pathway side of the ditch, awaited their victims. They were holding small caliber arms - six millimeters - used in the KZ for administering a bullet in the back of the neck. At the end of the pathway two Sonderkommando men seized the victims by the arms and dragged them for 15 or 20 yards into position before the SS. Their cries of terror covered the sound of the shots. A shot, then, immediately afterwards, even before he was dead, the victim was hurled into the flames. — Miklos Nyiszli

I know something happens between the time our mothers and fathers and teachers and mentors send us out into the world telling us, "The world is yours," and "You are beautiful," and "You can be anything," and the time we return to them.

Something happens when people tell me I have a pretty face, ignoring me from the neck down. When I watch the news and see unarmed black men and women shot dead over and over, it's kind of hard to believe this world is mine.

Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces.

Mom's love repairs me. — Renee Watson

How do you know he's dead? I realize that I may regret asking that question." "He's got a broken neck from falling off a roof and I reckon he fell off because he got a steel crossbow dart in his brain." "Ah. That sounds like dead, if you want my medical opinion. — Terry Pratchett

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge. — Ambrose Bierce

I ran from the barn out through the herd to make certain and saw that the coyote was really dead, as was the sheep, but I ran smack into what makes border collies the incredible beings that they are. Louise grabbed at the coyote's neck, growling, and having made certain that it was dead, tried to bring the sheep back to life. She pulled at the ewe, trying to lift her to her feet, nudged at her ribs in a kind of crude CPR, — Gary Paulsen

Why doesn't she call the cops and get me shipped off to children's prison, if this is how incorrigible I really am? "Alexander Portnoy, aged five, you are hereby sentenced to hang by your neck until you are dead for refusing to say you are sorry to your mother." You'd think the child lapping up their milk and taking baths with his duck and his boats in their tub was the most wanted criminal in America. — Philip Roth

I lay down beside Carlo in his bassinet. I must have been there five or six hours, my arm around his neck, and would have stayed another six if Pa-pa hadn't started tugging at me. He would tell people how I had all the strength of a steam engine, and that he couldn't pull me loose until I heard Ma-am cry.
"Em," she moaned, "you cannot stay in this room forever with a dead dog. — Jerome Charyn

Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha' knows." "Ferret-legging?" Rachel looked at him incredulously. "Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knees with duct tape - as you probably know, no Yorkshireman would be seen dead wearing anything under his sporran - and take a ferret by the scruff of his neck. A ferret, that's like, uh, a bit like a mink. Only less friendly. It's a young man's initiation rite; you stick the ferret where the sun doesn't shine and dance the furry dance to the tune of a balalaika. Last man standing and all that, kind of like the ancient Boer aardvark-kissing competition." Martin shuddered dramatically. "I hate ferrets. The bloody things bite like a cask-strength single malt without the nice after-effects. — Charles Stross

My mom tries to comfort me by saying that girls like Heather Campbell tend to peak early in life and then quickly fade. That's why she looks so much better than everyone now. But by the time I go to my ten-year reunion, I'll be way prettier than she is. To which I always reply with the same statement, "I don't want to be pretty in ten years. I want to be pretty now."
Because what good is it to me now that I might or might not be drop-dead gorgeous when I'm twenty-seven? It's not like I can go to school every day with a big cardboard sign around my neck that says, "Trust me, in ten years, I'll look like this." And then an arrow pointing to a picture of a supermodel. — Jessica Brody

Layken, you're dead!" Kel shouts, through the open window as he thrusts his imaginary sword into my neck. He waits for me to slump over, but I just roll my eyes at him. "I stabbed you. You're supposed to die!" he says.
"Believe me, I'm already dead. — Colleen Hoover

His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. What skin the corpse lord showed was white, save for a bloody blotch that crept up his neck onto his cheek. — George R R Martin

Lorcan heard the moan of the soldier pinned to the floor beneath his boot. With a sneer, he pushed his foot down harder on his neck. The worthless little bastard had failed him. He'd come back without the bitch.
He glanced over his shoulder at his lieutenants. They watched him, trying their best to hide their fear. But he could smell it. He looked back at the lowering suns. "I want my sister." He growled the words low. "I want my sister!" He slammed his foot down, snapping the man's neck and crushing his jaw. "Now get out of my sight!"
He heard them run from the room.
They better run.
He would have his sister. He would see the bitch dead if he had to destroy half the world to get to her. — G.A. Aiken

Mrs. McGinty's dead..how did she die?
down on one knee..just like I
mrs. McGinty's dead..how did she die?
holding her hand out..just like I
mrs. McGinty's dead.. how did she die?
sticking her neck out..just like I — Agatha Christie

I look at him dead-on. "I finally have a secret of my own. Not so fun being on the other side of one, is it?"
The slow burn of amusement warms his features. He leans in and whispers, "On the contrary, My Queen. I cannot imagine anything more delicious than peeling away your defenses, layer by layer, and baring your precious ... secret."
Heat climbs my chest and fills my neck and cheeks. It's beyond unsettling, how quickly he can shift between comforter and tormentor. — A.G. Howard

Blue draped an arm over his cold neck. There wasn't really anything to say to make being dead better. — Maggie Stiefvater

You are sauntering along the back streets of Avallon; you step into a tavern for a cup of wine. A great lummox claims that you have molested his wife; he takes up his cutlass and comes at you. So now! With your knife! Draw and throw! All in a single movement! You advance, pull your knife from the villain's neck, wipe it on his sleeve. If in fact you have molested the dead churl's wife, bid her begone! The episode has quite dampened your spirit. But you are attacked from another side by another husband. Quick! — Jack Vance

I remember the dog at home, when I was a girl; the one that killed chickens. They tied a dead hen around his neck and he carried it around with him all day until he just lay there unmoving with his eyes shut in a morass of shame. It was cruel. There's nothing so hideously easy as giving someone a bad conscience. — Tove Jansson

I mustered all my strength, drew back, and swung.
The sword's blade hit the side of her neck, hard and deep. She gave a horrible, sickening cry, a shriek that made my skin crawl. She tried to move toward me. I pulled back and hit again. Her hands clutched at her throat, and her knees gave way. I struck and struck, the sword digging in deeper into her neck each time. Cutting off someone's head was harder than I thought it would be. The old, dull sword probably wasn't helping.
But finally, I gained enough sense to realize she wasn't moving. Her head lay there, detached from her body, her dead eyes looking up at me as though she couldn't believe what had happened. That made two of us. — Richelle Mead

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

So, Mr. Shane, you felt you had the right to come down here and bespoil my crime scene because ... " He raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer. "I thought he might need assistance," Shane lied. "And the untoward angle of his neck did not tell you that he was beyond any earthly assistance you might render?" "I'm not a doctor, sir," Shane said. "Neither are you a miracle worker, son," Xavier said. "Should you find any other bodies in my jurisdiction, you will refrain from attempting to raise them from the dead. — Jennifer Crusie

The question is," Harry whispered, trying desperately to joke, "whether it's better to be dead from the neck up or the neck down," and the doctor smiled, knowing Harry was protecting himself with his sense of irony. — Morley Callaghan

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, 'I'm glad Sergei's dead. I'm just sorry I didn't get to wring his neck myself.'
'You'd need two hands for that,' said Zoya.
There was a brief, terrible silence, then Adrik scowled and said, 'Okay, stab him. — Leigh Bardugo

Autumn comes
like a buyer of cloth,
her long fingers
touching,
turning orange,
yellow, brown.

taking what she wants,
stretching
the bone taut air.

Her skin crackles beneath
our feet.

I didn't think anyone wanted me,

bruises pulled
like a sweater around
my neck.

We talk
in the pore tightening air,
branches bare,
about the girl buried in the chill
of prewinter.

We show each other
our mutilated children
in the guise of women
as autumn plucks
at our lips.

Each color,
blue, black, ochre
popping like kisses
on the rib lined flesh,
the puberty soft things.

And we muse
how women
keep bruises
hidden
beneath dead
leaves. — Janice Mirikitani

The dreamers dream from the neck up, their bodies securely strapped to the electric chair. To imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable. One must act as if the next step were the last, which it is. Each step forward is the last, and with it a world dies, one's self included. We are here of the earth never to end, the past
never ceasing, the future never beginning, the present never ending. The never-never world which we hold in our hands and see and yet is not ourselves. We are that which is never
concluded, never shaped to be recognized, all there is and yet not the whole, the parts so much greater than the whole that only God the mathematician can figure it out. — Henry Miller

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven's gate. — Ned Hayes

A moan escaped her lips when he brushed the back of his knuckles up her neck before gently cupping her face.
"I never run from a challenge," Sadie murmured. She pressed her breasts against him, the soft mounds of flesh searing against him.
Killian felt like he was in the middle of a game of double dog dare
and it was a surefire bet he was going to lose. Sadie signed, a seductive sounds that made his cock twitch.
Oh yeah. Dead wolf walking. — Sara Humphreys

Sliced off like a chicken neck and stuck with a hatpin. Reminded me of my husband." Lula leaned forward so she could whisper. "You talking about size? Was your man's part that big?" "Heck no," Grandma said. "His part was that dead. — Janet Evanovich

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song. — Lauren Groff

True, but there was a plaque depicted in the painting, hung around the figure's neck, and on it was writing in Sumerian cuneiform. As you know, in addition to my other studies, I am an amateur necrolinguist - "

"It means the likes to lick the dead," explained Henri.

"It means he studies dead languages," corrected Lucien. — Christopher Moore

There was already something dead about him. He didn't rear back in his knees any longer. He squatted over his ankles when he walked. That stillness at the back of his neck. His prosperous-looking belly ... sagged like a load suspended from his loins. — Zora Neale Hurston

I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as I lay the sausage against my ear. Abruptly, my cell phone went dead. A drop of grease dribbled into the dead center of my ear, creeping like a worm down onto my neck and below the collar of my shirt. A group of men and women in business suits walked by, swerving to avoid me. Across the street, a homeless-looking guy was staring at me, curious. Yep, this was pretty much rock bottom. As I was about to reach for a napkin and at least get my money's worth by eating the bratwurst while still hot, I heard it. Dave? Can you hear me? — David Wong

It would be a primal offering of food from man to woman and a satisfyingly primitive declaration of intent. However, he mused, one could never be sure these days who would be offended by being handed a dead mallard bleeding from a breast full of tooth-breaking shot and sticky about the neck with dog saliva. — Helen Simonson

[Stares at dead knight, killed by the Direwolves]
Ersen: If he had sounded his horn ...
Theon: Try and imagine it was you up there, Ersen. Its dark and cold. You have been walking century for hours looking forward to the end of your watch. Then you hear a noise and you move forward to the gate, and suddenly, you see eyes glowing green and gold in the torchlight.
Two shadows come rushing toward you faster than you can believe. You catch a glimpse of teeth, start to level your spear, and they slam into you and open your belly, tearing through leather as if it was cheese cloth.
[Shoves Ersen hard]
Theon: And now you're down on you back, your guts are spilling out and one of them has his teeth around your neck.
[Grabs Ersen around the neck and sqeezes]
Theon: Tell me, at what moment during all of this do you stop to blow your Fucking horn?
[Shoves Ersen roughly] — George R R Martin

I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song ... — Sappho

Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut.
Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck.
Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead.
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.
-From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales — Lauren Oliver

Talking to you is like talking to someone I've never met before. When did you become so competitive? When did you decide that you needed to win all of the time?'
He stopped dead in the promenade and grabbed her hand, turning her to face him.
He caught her by surprise. She leant her neck backwards slightly in defence.
'When I lost you. — Tan Redding

My foes have missed their mark in this shooting at me: I am not the man: I wish that they themselves be guiltless. If all the fornicators and adulterers in England were hanged up by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan, the object of their envy, would be still alive and well. — John Bunyan

The Arabs from Zanzibar convinced them to become Muslim, then recruited them to capture our Chewa people and put us into bondage. They raided our villages, killed our men, then sent our women and children across the lake in boats. Once there, the slaves were shackled by the neck and made to march across Tanzania. This took three months. Once they reached the ocean, most of them were dead. Later on, the Yao captured and traded us to the Portuguese in exchange for guns, gold, and salt. — William Kamkwamba

Won? He's one of them! How exactly is that winning?"
Michael shook his head, moved up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. He kissed the nape of her neck gently. "I don't know, Eve. I'm just telling you what I heard. He got some kind of agreement out of the vampires. And it was because Amelie loved him."
"Yeah, loved him enough to kill him and turn him into a bloodsucking fiend," Eve said grimly. "How sweet. Romance isn't dead. Oh, wait. It is. — Rachel Caine

yowled at me to go, so I ran into the trees. I should have carried on running, but I couldn't leave while they were still fighting. I turned and crept back to see if Tigerclaw needed help. By the time I got near, all the RiverClan warriors had fled, leaving just Redtail and Tigerclaw. Redtail was watching the last warrior running away and Tigerclaw" - Ravenpaw paused, then gulped - "Tigerclaw j-jumped on him. He sank his teeth into the back of his neck and Redtail fell to the ground, dead. That's when I ran. I don't know — Erin Hunter

I barged through the palace, dripping a trail of blood behind me as I held the dead bird by the neck. — Alwyn Hamilton

I broke my neck, it's a classic neck break from chin to chest. If I had been alone, I would probably be dead. — Brooke Burns

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else's life based on someone else's judgment, and carry it out on someone else's schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone's throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner's crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don't get to manhandle them with your own hands. That's why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

It was Rogelio, Chutsky's friend from the front desk, who was going to tell us when Weiss checked in. But it certainly didn't look like he was going to tell us much of anything, unless we listened to him with a Ouija board. Because if appearances were any guide at all, judging by the belt so tightly wrapped around his neck and the way his tongue and eyes bulged out, Rogelio was extremely dead. — Jeff Lindsay

Honestly, I wish I were dead.
Weeping many tears, she left me and said,
"Alas, how terribly we suffer, Sappho.
I really leave you against my will."
And I answered: "Farewell, go and remember me.
You know how we cared for you.
If not, I would remind you
... of our wonderful times.
For by my side you put on
many wreaths of roses
and garlands of flowers
around your soft neck.
And with precious and royal perfume
you anointed yourself.
On soft beds you satisfied your passion.
And there was no dance,
no holy place
from which we were absent. — Sappho

Myrnin, who hadn't said much, suddenly reached out and wrapped his arms around her.
She stiffened, shocked, and for a panicked second wondered whether he'd suddenly decided to snack on her neck ... but it was just a hug.
His body felt cold against hers, and way too close, but then he let go and stepped back. "You've done very well. I'm extremely proud of you," he said. There was a touch of color high in his pale cheeks. "Do go home now. And shower. You reek like the dead."
Which, coming from a vampire, was pretty rich. — Rachel Caine

A gray V-neck T-shirt hugged his wide shoulders and broad chest, then hung loose over his tight abdomen. a pair of worn Levi's lovingly cupped his generous package, embraced long legs, and broke across the tops of well-worn cowboy boots. Jackson had the type of physique that made a woman's girl parts tingle. She'd have to be dead not to include herself in that party. Especially since her girl parts had been told "No" way too many time sin recent years. — Candis Terry

If this were real life,
Ed would have looked at her neck-
bite, dead, burp, credits. — Ryan Mecum

It was hard to understand, and all I knew was that you had to run, run, run without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn't understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you'd been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever. — Alan Sillitoe

give a fig for the dead while they was still alive, or if they never gave a fig for you, because let's face it, as great a proportion of the dead are arseholes as the living. It stands to reason, although you won't find many funerals begin with 'he was a total pain in the neck and only half as clever as he thought, so let's put him in the ground and have a pint, and good riddance.' I've always thought that would have a certain charm, myself. — Nick Harkaway

Ela reached out for Grego. He refused to go to her. Instead he did exactly what Ender expected, what he had prepared for. Grego turned in Ender's relaxed grip, flung his arms around the neck of the speaker for the dead, and wept bitterly, hysterically. Ender spoke gently to the others, who watched helplessly. "How could he show his grief to you, when he thought you hated him?" "We never hated Grego," said Olhado. "I should have known," said Miro. "I knew he was suffering the worst pain of any of us, but it never occurred to me . . ." "Don't blame yourself," said Ender. "It's the kind of thing that only a stranger can see." He heard Jane whispering in his ear. "You never cease to amaze me, Andrew, the way you turn people into plasma. — Orson Scott Card

I wish I'd thrown my arms around Gus's neck and kicked up my back foot or squealed his name or any of the things that a normal woman would do, seeing a man she was fond of, who she thought was dead. — Amy Bloom

He might have known that she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with the whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar slut. — W. Somerset Maugham

Paradoxically, the fear of breaking your neck (translation in corporate terms: losing your job) does not make change impossible. It's a much more insidious kind of fear that interferes with change: the fear of mockery. If you want to make change in your organization utterly impossible, try mocking people as they struggle with the new, unfamiliar ways you have just urged upon them. There is no surer way to stop essential change dead. The safety that is required for essential change is a sure sense that no one will be mocked, demeaned, or belittled while struggling to achieve renewed mastery. — Tom DeMarco

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat ... or a girl? — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Behind the building was a field and when the potpourri scent of her cleaner made me sneeze, I went outside. There were calves there, these sweet things that watched me with less interest than I watched them. There was this raggedy one, sitting in the middle of the field, its mother nearby. I didn't realize it was sick until it tried to get up and it couldn't. It kept trying and it couldn't and then, eventually - it didn't. After a while, a truck drove in. A man and a boy got out, looked it over while its mother stood close. It was dead, the calf. Dead and too heavy to load into the truck bed, so they tied a rope around its neck, tied the other end to the truck and dragged it off the field like that. Its mother watched until it disappeared and when it was out of view, she called for it. Just kept calling for it so long after it was gone. Sometimes I feel something like that, between my mom and me. That I'm the daughter she keeps calling for so long after she's been gone. — Courtney Summers

I take the knife and stab myself in the neck. I bleed out on top of the fortune-teller's grave and then I'm dead and that's my game. I am OK and I'll be OK but this is the end and this is my story. CH. — John Darnielle

Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitter joy. He kissed the closed eyelids, and the wild spray that lay upon their cups was less salt than his tears.
And to the dead thing he made confession. Into the shells of its ears he poured the harsh wine of his tale. He put the little hands round his neck, and with his fingers he touched the thin reed of the throat. Bitter, bitter was his joy, and full of strange gladness was his pain. — Oscar Wilde

If you go to the Rijksmuseum, which I really wanted to do- but who are we kidding, neither of us can walk through a museum. But anyway, I looked at the collection online before we left. If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Nor. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there's no gory in illness. there is no meaning to it. There is no honour of dying of — John Green

Though films become more daring sexually, they are probably less sexy than they ever were. There haven't been any convincing love scenes or romances in the movies in a while. (Nobody even seems to neck in theaters any more.) ... when the mechanics and sadism quotients go up, the movie love interest goes dead, and the film just lies there, giving a certain amount of offense. — Renata Adler

When you kill someone, something from that person passes to you - a sigh, a smell or a gesture. I call it "the curse of the victim." It clings to your body and seeps into your skin, going all the way into your heart, and thus continues to live within you. I carry with me the traces of all the men I have killed. I wear them around my neck like invisible necklaces, feeling their presence against my flesh, tight and heavy. In every murderer breathes the man he murdered. — Elif Shafak

We'll have to manage this very carefully, Evie. From what I saw, it would appear that entire court wants you dead."
"Yeah, well, you know. Stopping their custom-made Empty One, stabbing their queen in the neck, breaking their mirror forest, I'm not really Miss Popularity there."
"Stabbing - You what?"
"Long story. Faerie? I'd really like to hang out with my boyfriend while he's, you know, conscious."
"Seconded," Lend shouted. — Kiersten White

The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature — Graham Greene

Yeah, well there's your first problem. You don't get it. You can't even see what you did. You're going to sit here today and you're going to convince yourself that you were right and I was unreasonable and you won't even think about what you just tried to make me into. But hey ... It's not my problem, now. You think what you want. I'm gone."
He sighed and reached for my suitcase. "Will you at least let me help you down the stairs?"
"Fuck off." I'd rather break my neck than let him give me a second of assistance.
"Topher, come on!" Now he sounded annoyed and seriously, fuck him, he didn't get to be pissy over this. I turned around and gave him a withering look.
"Be sure you clear the lube out of the bedside table before you bang your wife in that room. It's a dead giveaway. — Amelia C. Gormley

I could see the sorrow in her eyes as she gently brushed his hair aside and kissed his brow. Then she snapped his neck. Ben's corpse tumbled to the floor. Emma sank to her knees beside him, mute. She brushed her fingertips along his lifeless arm. If this was an action movie, that would have been her cue to say something badass. But this wasn't a movie. It was just a stupid dead man and a grieving widow and a gulf of pain I couldn't imagine. — Craig Schaefer

All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes."
"When I sleep I turn into a wolf." Bran turned his face away and looked back out into the night. "Do wolves dream?"
"All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do."
"Do dead men dream?" Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father's likeness in granite.
"Some say yes, some no," the maester answered. "The dead themselves are silent on the matter."
"Do trees dream?"
"Trees? No ... "
"They do," Bran said with sudden certainty. "They dream tree dreams. I dream of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me. The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the blood."
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. "If you would only spend more time with the other children - "
"I hate the other children," Bran said, meaning the Walders. "I commanded you to send them away. — George R R Martin

Beckett, where's Eve?"
When he had her pressed to his chest, she tried again. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
Beckett sighed and looked into her face. "I left her, babycakes. She needs wings, not handcuffs."
He held Livia tighter, like she was a teddy bear.
She stopped moving her feet and hugged him around the neck. "You're not handcuffs. Don't you know that? She loves you. She does, I've seen it."
Beckett resumed dancing, dipping her again. "Look around, Whitebread. She's not here. She didn't try to stop me from coming. Her heart belongs to a dead man and a dream. I'm neither of those things." Beckett released her and clapped for the end of the song. He reached in his pocket and produced a crumpled envelope. "Here's my gift to you guys. I'm sure Blake won't want to accept it, but I'm hoping you'll convince him. For me. — Debra Anastasia

Aubade with a Broken Neck The first night you don't come home summer rains shake the clematis. I bury the dead moth I found in our bed, scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough with dirt. The dog finds me and presents between his gentle teeth a twitching nightjar. In her panic, she sings in his mouth. He gives me her pain like a gift, and I take it. I hear the cries of her young, greedy with need, expecting her return, but I don't let her go until I get into the house. I read the auspices - the way she flutters against the wallpaper's moldy roses means all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling means a storm approaches. You should see her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing at the starless window, her body a dart, her body the arrow of longing, aimed, as all desperate things are, to crash not into the object of desire, but into the darkness behind it. — Traci Brimhall

We are neck and neck but there will be a very - it will be a very tough campaign in the last ten days. We must be very open and sincere with the Greek people. They should know what they could really expect. I think all of these old political logic is dead. We have to be honest, open and determined to get the Greeks out of this crisis. — Dora Bakoyannis

I look down at the city again. From here the city resembles a severed head, incinerated and discarded by the side of the river; its cavernous eye sockets are empty, bundles of dead nerves dangle from its neck, its shattered mouth gapes, a few desolate wires hang from its stark, scorched skull and, suddenly and incomprehensibly and so foreign to my body I could weep, I feel my heart expand with what I can only describe as a sensation of hope. Is there a word for that? Hope in the face of grand calamity. — Nick Cave