Death Coming Quotes & Sayings

45,000 sections of reinforced concrete - three tons each.
Nearly 300 watchtowers.
Over 250 dog runs.
Twenty bunkers.
Sixty five miles of anti-vehicle trenches - signal wire, barbed wire, beds of nails.
Over 11,000 armed guards.
A death strip of sand, well-raked to reveal footprints.
200 ordinary people shot dead following attempts to escape the communist regime.
96 miles of concrete wall.

Not your typical holiday destination.

JF Kennedy said the Berlin Wall was a better option than a war. In TDTL, the Anglo-German Bishop family from the pebbledashed English suburb of Oaking argue about this - among other - notions while driving to Cold War Berlin, through all the border checks, with a plan to visit both sides of it. — Joanna Campbell

But it's like life, isn't it? We know death is coming. And yet we always see our loved ones as taken away from us, instead of given to us for whatever time they have. — Graham Joyce

Jakatakan. Ancient isle. The mythical island beyond the Riders.' She addressed the others. 'But not so mythical, yes?'
'Until they came,' breathed Sister Esa.
'And what name did they come bearing?' Sister Gosh demanded.
'The name of the Island of the House of Death,' said Totsin.
'Malaz,' said Carfin, facing outward to the night.
'They are coming,' affirmed Sister Gosh. — Ian C. Esslemont

Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug. — Stephen King

Dastardly devious, cleverly conceived, and just a whole lot of fun to read, DEATH PERCEPTION is Lee Allen Howard on fire and at his finest. Rife with winsome weirdness, it's like the mutant stepchild of Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King, mixing a truly unique paranormal coming-of-age story with a quirky cast of offbeat noir characters into a novel that's simply unforgettable ... and hilariously original. A supernatural crime story, blazing with creative intrigue ... don't miss it. — Michael Arnzen

The idea of death robs inquiry of its passionate vitality and empties our efforts of their purpose by coming to one predestined conclusion, death. Why inquire if you already know the answer? — James Hillman

The place of horror turns out to be no more than a green scoop, sometimes shadowed, sometimes shining with the bilberries and grass within it, as if a mouth had opened from which streamed a beam of light. So my uncle Robert's death, which had looked from a distance to be an all-consuming tragedy was, close-up, the story of a man finding release from his pain and how his brother had showed such defiant love. The past was a grave, a trap - and yet, also neither of these. Just light, coming and going.
At the wolf pit you imagine you will stare into a hole littered with bones, but what draws you to that place is not what you take from it. The wolf pit seems a delicate illusion. You walk towards it; there is nothing, just a curve of the moor; then it is a soft green light, and then it is nothing again. — Will Cohu

She was crouched in the corner of the room, eating something off the floor. It was the old woman dressed in endless black. When she looked up this time there was no question she was there for me. She had the face of my mother but much older, her ancient decayed mouth coming closer for her good-night kiss. I steeled myself against her putrid smell, the mouthful of bitter dust, but as her lips touched mine it was like biting into a purple black plum whose fruit was brilliant red, like an explosion of intense joy. Its childhood smell wrinkled my nose with pleasure, its sweet juices ran down my chin, turning into a beautiful black ocean where I floated safely, not lost as I had imagined, but securely tucked away deep in space. — Mary Woronov

I wanted to kill someone and I wanted to die and I wanted to run as far and as fast as I could because she was never coming back. She had fallen off the face of the earth and she was never coming back. — Melissa Kantor

Glaring at the Gasman, ter Borcht said, "Your time is coming to an end, you
pathetic failure of an experiment. Vhat you say now is how you vill be
remembered."
Gazzy's blue eyes flashed. "Then you can remember me telling you to kiss
my-"
"Enough!" ter Borcht said. — James Patterson

I don't know anyone who has been handed only roses. We all encounter hardships. Some we see coming; others take us by surprise. It can be as tragic as the sudden death of a child, as heartbreaking as a relationship that unravels, or as disappointing as a dream that goes unfulfilled. The question is: When these things happen, what do we do next? I — Sheryl Sandberg

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. — Johnny B. Truant

Any requests on the kind of car?"
"Something with armor?" she said. "Oooh, and headrest DVD. Bonus for surround sound."
"Rocket launchers," Michael said.
"One hot yellow Hummer with optional mass destruction package, coming up. — Rachel Caine

I'm afraid of death ... Yes, but that doesn't stop death coming ... — Agatha Christie

Faith is a fruit, work, or gift of the Spirit of God, whereby a poor soul is enabled through the mighty operation of God, in a sense of its sins and wretched estate to lay hold on the righteousness, blood, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming again of the Son of God which was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem, for eternal life. — John Bunyan

I totally kicked Ashman ass over there! I was all like hi-yah and you wanna piece of me? I was a super slayer! Buffy's got nothing on me."
...
"It was life and death out there, guys. Life and death. They just kept coming at me and I just kept putting them down ... I mean, sure, I screamed like a girl a few times and accidentally stabbed myself at the beginning, but still. — Chelsea Fine

This is the fear: death will come and we have not lived yet. We are just preparing to live. Nothing is ready; life has not happened. We have not known the ecstasy which life is; we have not known the bliss life is; we have not known anything. We have just been breathing in and out. We have been just existing. Life has been just a hope and death is coming near. And if life has not yet happened and death happens before it, of course, obviously, we will be afraid because we would not like to die. — Rajneesh

Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live. I am coming. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The commemoration of Christ's saving Passion is at hand, and the new, great spiritual Passover, which is the reward for dispassion and the prelude of the world to come. Lazarus proclaims it in advance by coming back from the depths of Hades and rising from the dead on the fourth day just by voice and command of God, Who has power over life and death (cf. Jn. 11:1-45). — Gregory Palamas

Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I'm building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn't have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn't have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn't have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I'm willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy. — Roberto Bolano

Anyone who thought this would be a weak point in the manor's defenses would have a rude surprise, shortly before coming down with a serious case of death. — Mercedes Lackey

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative. — Peter Dube

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death
ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. — James Baldwin

Messina between the volcanoes, Etna and Stromboli, having known the death-agony's terror. I always dread coming near the awful place, yet I have found the people kind, almost feverishly so, as if they knew the awful need for kindness. — D.H. Lawrence

I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien culture seeing the death of this planet - coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around; finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why our end came before its time and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death.. — Roger Waters

If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love death - not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. . . . Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him. — E. M. Forster

I thought that some of the hymns bespoke the true religion of the place. The people didn't really want to be saints of self-deprivation and hatred of the world. They knew that the world would sooner or later deprive them of all it had given them, but still they liked it. What they came together for was to acknowledge, just by coming, their losses and failures and sorrows, their need for comfort, their faith always needing to be greater, their wish (in spite of all words and acts to the contrary) to love one another and to forgive and be forgiven, their need for one another's help and company and divine gifts, their hope (and experience) of love surpassing death, their gratitude. — Wendell Berry

Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous. — Lillian Hellman

A time is coming when the whole round world will know that God reigns and that God is Love, when hell and heaven, life and death, sin and salvation, will be read and understood aright at last. — Oswald Chambers

I feel more alive now than I did while on earth. I am coming to terms with the notion that death is truly another word for opportunity. — H. L. Balcomb

Maeve was rapidly coming to the conclusion that in a well-organized world, Death should be like the kind of all-expenses-included luxury vacation where they give you a folder at the start filled with the tickets, discount vouchers, schedules, and several phone numbers to ring if you get into trouble. — Neil Gaiman

That is when I understood the magical meaning of the circle. If you go away from a row, you can still come back into it. A row is an open formation. But a circle closes up, and if you go away from it, there is no way back. It is not by chance that the planets move in circles and that a rock coming loose from one of them goes inexorably away, carried off by centrifugal force. Like a meteorite broken off from a planet, I left the circle and have not stopped falling. Some people are granted their death as they are whirling around, and others are smashed at the end of their fall. And these others (I am one of them) always retain a kind of faint yearning for that lost ring dance, because we are all inhabitants of a universe where everything turns in circles. — Milan Kundera

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

There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I've been thinking about a lot while writing this essay. In it, Buffy sacrifices her own life to save her sister, and right before she does, she tells her sister that the hardest thing to do in the world is to live - ironic words coming from someone about to kill herself for the greater good. As I'm writing this, I just keep thinking that Katniss never gets to sacrifice herself. She doesn't get the heroic death. She survives - and that leaves her doing the hardest thing in the world: living in it once so many of the ones she loves are gone. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

And yet suddenly, terribly, he wanted it again, the way it used to be, arms linked together, all drunk and singing beautifully into the night, with visions of death from the afternoon and dreams of death in the coming dawn, the night filled with a monstrous and temporary glittering joy, fat moments, thick seconds dropping like warm rain, jewel after jewel. — Michael Shaara

It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam," said Frodo, "and I could not have borne that."
"Not as certain as being left behind," said Sam.
"But I am going to Mordor."
"I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you. — J.R.R. Tolkien

A great deal about what Jesus did between the time of his birth and the time of his death. In particular, they tell us about what we might call his kingdom-inaugurating work: the deeds and words that declared that God's kingdom was coming then and there, in some sense or other, on earth as in heaven. They tell us a great deal about that; but the great creeds don't. — N. T. Wright

I'm coming for you and death will not hide you." Jorg Ancrath — Mark Lawrence

The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He'd read a poem many years before called "The Death-Self," and he hadn't understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he'd put into holding things together - Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself - was coming free. He'd shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He'd started - only started - to realize that he'd actually fallen in love with the object of his search after he knew for certain that he'd lost her. He'd seen unequivocally that the chaos he'd dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in. — James S.A. Corey

As clear as it is important, the death of Detroit is still mostly ignored. Generally, the slow destruction of a major city would get a fair amount of attention, but the lack of coverage is hardly surprising. After all, the "bad guys" aren't the popular ones. In most circles, condemning taxation, regulation, unionization, welfarism and protectionism is unfashionable. It's necessary to check political correctness at the door and appreciate that the case of Detroit isn't an isolated tragedy. What happened in Detroit could be coming to a city near you. — Dan Greenup

We accept so many commitments in regard to life that a time comes when, despairing of ever managing to fulfill them all, we face the graves, we call upon death, "death, which brings help to destinies that have trouble coming true." But while death may exempt us from commitments we have made in regard to life, it cannot exempt us from our commitments to ourselves, especially the most important one: namely, the commitment to live in order to be worthy and deserving. — Marcel Proust

Death has two stages, first the separation of the body from the spirit ... for a purely spiritual existence, and second, reunion with the body and a glorious resurrection at the Second Coming of Christ. — Billy Graham

Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life? Having waited well over half an hour for an answer to these questions, and none coming, let us get on with the story. — Virginia Woolf

editor in New York and my mom and dad on the phone. My body is weak and bloated. I'm slowly poisoning myself to death. And it's not like I haven't seen what this shit does to people. The most fucked-up detoxes I've ever seen are the people coming off alcohol. It's worse than heroin, worse than benzos, worse than anything. Alcohol can pickle your brain - leaving you helpless, like a child - infantilized - shitting in your pants - ranting madness - disoriented - angry - terrified. But that's not gonna be me, I mean, it can't be. I may hate myself. I may fantasize about suicide. But I'm way too vain to let myself die an alcoholic death. There's nothing glamorous about alcoholism. You don't go out like Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, with a gorgeous woman riding you till your heart stops. Alcoholism takes you down slow, robbing you of every last bit of dignity on your way — Nic Sheff

If the conversation people think is coming is the 'death panel' conversation, that's a total failure. — Atul Gawande

Death twitches my ear;
'Live,' he says...
'I'm coming. — Virgil

If he could sleep, she thought, sleep through the unhappy months, the heart's hunger, the months of death and cold and not having what you most want, and wake with time gone past and blurred and a new year coming. But perhaps it is too early in the year, she thought after that, and besides, he is not a bear. — Naomi Mitchison

Nature is never static. It is always changing. Everything is in a constant state of flux. Nothing endures. Everything is in the process of either coming into being or expiring. — Kilroy J. Oldster

She was pretty and smart, which makes her death a tragedy. She was poor and black, which means people say they saw it coming. — Gabrielle Zevin

Perhaps death is just a big lie. — Bella James

It was not boring, said Majnoun, but it was strange. The people were always looking away to where you couldn't see. The whole time, I thought there was something coming. Then at the end, it was death that came. — Andre Alexis

Similar to how God led Israel into the Promised Land, now he is adding all people who believe in Jesus to the spiritual membership of the spiritual Promised Land. The New Jerusalem will be revealed at the second coming of Jesus (Revelation 3:11-13; 21:2). Through Adam we experience our physical bodies and death, but in Jesus the Christ (Messiah), we will be raised to live forever! The Bible states: — Steven Masood

Put to death therefore what is earthly to you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. — Jewel E. Ann

The saints must be honored as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God. Let us carefully observe the manner of life of all the apostles, martyrs, ascetics, and just men who announced the coming of the Lord. And let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering, and perseverance unto death so that we may also share their crowns of glory. — John Of Damascus

It's unnatural to believe death usually has a beauty and a concordance and is usually a coming together of your life's work. It leads to frustration for the patient. And it leaves grieving families convinced they did something wrong. — Sherwin B. Nuland

And friendship, and love." Leia knew that Luke's selflessness in coming for her on the Death Star, and Han's unspoken devotion in saving her on Hoth, had not only kept her alive but also changed the entire course of the galaxy for the better. "Those things matter, too, maybe more than all the rest." Ransolm — Claudia Gray

It was not until after the coming of Christ that time and humans could breathe freely. It was not until after him that people began to live toward the future. Humans do not die in a ditch like a dog-but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of death is in full swing; they die sharing in this work. — Boris Pasternak

The hallucination of separateness prevents one from seeing that to cherish the ego is to cherish misery. We do not realize that our so-called love and concern for the individual is simply the other face of our own fear of death or rejection. In his exaggerated valuation of separate identity, the personal ego is sawing off the branch on which he is sitting, and then getting more and more anxious about the coming crash! — Alan Watts

I was like you are. I thought Jesus came and died on the cross. Jesus' being here was about his death and dying on the cross but it really was about him coming to show us how to do it. To show us the Christ-consciousness that he had and that conciousness abides in all of us. That's what I got. That's what I got. — Oprah Winfrey

All human affairs rest upon probabilities, and the same thing is true everywhere. If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted would betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every great fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death. — Charles Sanders Peirce

Listen.
Dead people never stop talking. Maybe because death is not death at all, just a detention after school. You know where you're coming from and you're always returning from it. You know where you're going though you never seem to get there and you're just dead. Dead. — Marlon James

There's nothing.
Nothing to hold on to while the current takes me.
Whatever I might have had until today, I've lost.
I feel my love for her, swelling; bloating into something that's about to explode, like an abscess that's been allowed to rot for too long, but the pain drowns it so completely I know I'm never coming back out. This feeling, that you're choking and that your body is underwater, immersed in the ocean, a dense flood that overpowers your breathing abilities, and your will to survive gets drowned right along with it. And as I'm drowning I see her face and hear her voice - and it doesn't give me hope, it terrifies me. I'm terrified because I know she's going to be the death of me. I'm terrified because I know I won't be able to cope. I'm terrified because the darkness is the only true friend I've ever had and if it wants to embrace me I don't have the power to make it stop. — Kady Hunt

We were putting into these gomers our fear of death, but who knew if they feared death? Perhaps they welcomed death like a dear long-lost cousin, grown old but still known, coming to visit, relieving the loneliness, the failing of the senses, the fury of the half-blind looking into the mirror and not recognizing who is looking back, a dear friend, a dear reliever, a healer who would be with them for an eternity, the same eternity as the long ago, before birth. — Samuel Shem

Let us serve Him faithfully as our Master. Let us obey Him loyally as our King. Let us study His teachings as our Prophet. Let us work diligently after Him as our Example. Let us look anxiously for Him as our coming redeemer of body as well as soul. But above all let us prize Him as our Sacrifice, and rest our whole weight on His death as atonement for sin. Let His blood be more precious in our eyes every year we live. Whatever else we glory in about Christ, let us glory above all things in His cross. — J.C. Ryle

All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom. — Isabel Allende

I get to watch you inhale. I get to make you breathe. It's like you're coming back from death, and it's a goddamn beautiful thing to see. — J.M. Darhower

The music is happy; the laughter is happy. Everything feels ecstatic and desperate. Blurrily, I think of sex, and I think of death. I realize: Every moment of joyous celebration contains the seed of death. — Laura Rose Wagner

When did it all begin? he thought. When did I go under? A dark, vaguely familiar Aztec lake. The nightmare. How do I get away? How do I take control? And the questions kept coming: Was getting away what he really wanted? Did he really want to leave it all behind? And he also thought: the pain doesn't matter anymore. And also: maybe it all began with my mother's death. And also: the pain doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't get any worse, as long as it isn't unbearable. And also: fuck, it hurts, fuck, it hurts. Pay it no mind, pay it no mind. And all around him, ghosts. — Roberto Bolano

Grief, like death, is banal and unique. So, a banal comparison. When you change your make of car, you suddenly notice how many other cars of the same sort there are on the road. They register in a way they never did before. When you are widowed, you suddenly notice all the widows and widowers coming towards you. Before, they had been more or less invisible, and they continue to remain so to the other drivers, to the unwidowed. — Julian Barnes

Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all. — William Shakespeare

He was the ghost you never saw coming, death breathing down your neck before you even realized you were in the crosshairs. — Lara Adrian

Those who die young, they are cheated," she said. "Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they're cheated because they don't know it's coming. They don't have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you're going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don't even think you have bones when you're young, even when you break them, you don't believe you have them. But when you're old, they start reminding you they're there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you're walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no? — Edwidge Danticat

What can I say? Death is messy. And she had it coming. — MaryJanice Davidson

Death was just an image, I told myself, a coming together of events in a single frame, and pain was just a part of the painting and haven't we learned our lesson? Meaning is most poignant when never fully accessed. — Alison Espach

If it had been a heart attack, the newspaper
might have used the word massive,
as if a mountain range had opened
inside her, but instead
it used the word suddenly, a light coming on
in an empty room. The telephone
fell from my shoulder, a black parrot repeating
something happened, something awful
a sunday, dusky. If it had been
terminal, we could have cradled her
as she grew smaller, wiped her mouth,
said good-bye. But it was sudden,
how overnight we could be orphaned
& the world became a bell we'd crawl inside
& the ringing all we'd eat. — Nick Flynn

I'm sick of white walls and endings. The only thing that doesn't end in this place is me. I don't end. I just go on, and on, swinging that scythe glued to my hand. There's no rhythm to the strokes. Few see death coming, and even those who do see death don't see me. Because there is no me. Not anymore. Always the reaper, never the reaped. Soon that won't bother me. Soon I won't care. Emotional death follows physical death at a different pace for each reaper. I've put it off for more than two years, but it's inevitable. — Rachel Vincent

Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution. — Stanislav Grof

I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony that transcends time and space, will sensuously caress and mold and pattern every facet of the terrestrial artifact as if it were a work of art, and man himself will become an organic art form. There is a long road ahead, and the stars are only way stations, but we have begun the journey. To be born in this age is a precious gift, and I regret the prospect of my own death only because I will leave so many pages of man's destiny - if you will excuse the Gutenbergian image - tantalizingly unread. But perhaps, as I've tried to demonstrate in my examination of the postliterate culture, the story begins only when the book closes. — Marshall McLuhan

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

She had not died there. A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which society would measure the quick motions of man. — E. M. Forster

If I could just have him until the day was over. Just a few more hours. But he was gone. I clasped my hand tightly over my mouth and felt a trembling that started deep inside move out to make all of me shake. I had a mighty impulse, it truly was mighty, to rise to my feet and howl. To overturn the chair and nightstand, to rip at my clothes, to bring down the very walls around us. But of course I did not do that. I pulled an elemental sense of outrage back inside and smoothed it down. I forced something far too big into something far too small, and this made for a surprising and unreasonable weight, as mercury does. I noticed sounds coming from my throat, little unladylike grunts. I saw that everything I'd ever imagined about what it would feel like when was pale. Was wrong. Was the shadow and not the mountain. And then, "It's all right," I said, quickly. "It's all right." To whom? I wondered later. — Elizabeth Berg

Lords of spirit, Lords of breath,
Lords of fireflies, stars, and light,
Who will keep the world from death?
Who will stop the coming night?
Blue eyes, blue eyes, have the sight. — Madeleine L'Engle

You know, your first album is about really amazing things. Your first album is always about coming of age, first love, first loss, usually you suffer a first loss of someone that you love to death, even, you know, really big life lessons, things you learn from your parents' divorce or from the travels that you took. — Brandi Carlile

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear- Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year. — Emily Dickinson

A movement in the vines startled her and an opossum scurried out, looked at Clare and flopped over in fake death. She had seen this twice before in her garden back home and it was difficult not to draw certain parallels, amusing ones, though if you played dead long enough the act of coming back to life was questionable. — Jim Harrison

Here the four elements of solidity, fluidity, heat and motion have no place; the notions of length and breadth, the subtle and the gross, good and evil, name and form are altogether destroyed; neither this world nor the other, nor coming, going or standing, neither death nor birth, nor sense-objects are to be found. — Walpola Rahula

We are born in debt, owing the world a death. This is the shadow that darkens every cradle. Trauma is what happens when you catch a surprise glimpse of that darkness, the coming annihilation not only of the body and the mind but also, seemingly, of the world. — David J. Morris

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

Oh and I thought, as i was dressing, how interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, and the gradual coming of death. As people describe love. To note every symptom of failure: but why failure? To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; and to detect every one of the gradual stages towards death which is a tremendous experience, an not as unconscious, at least in its approaches, as death is. — Virginia Woolf

You do that, and you'll be wishing for death before her body even hits the ground. The Gatekeeper is coming. Executioner for the Feral Breed, brother to the Beast, and mated to the woman you hold against her will. You've fucked up, friend. — Ellis Leigh

I stood, crossed over to my office and poured him a cup, then asked if he liked his coffee like I liked my Death Stars: gigantic, on the Dark Side, and powerful enough to destroy a planet. He laughed softly. "A little cream is fine." "One coffee high coming up," I — Darynda Jones

And in that very moment, away behind in some far corner of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed reckoning nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. — J.R.R. Tolkien

In a drawl so low, it seemed to suspend time, the old man said, "When the last leaf falls from the Widow's Tree this year, she'll be done for good. No coming back. No bothering anyone no more. Nobody will find her bones, and before next spring, nobody'll even remember her. She'll just be a wisp of a thing."
Peggy looked toward the tree, now hidden behind a low patch of morning cloud. She breathed out hard through her nose. "That's a terrible thing to do. Even for you, even to her."
"Set in motion a long time ago," he said blithely. "Just took this long to finish up. — Alex Bledsoe

Since we're coming into a rebirth, and there's a consciousness of health, because the disease that is death, we are able to overcome that. — Jimmy Cliff

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. — John Irving

things started getting better when the people of West Point slum starting singing "No one is coming to save us!" It was a turning point. It meant they understood that local leaders were their best hope for surival. The people were finally in charge of their own future. The story turned from being about the failure of outsiders to the success of community resilience. And in the coming months when West Point slum's death toll fell far short of projections, citizens and local leaders could look at each other and say, "We did this ourselves! — Marc Maxmeister

It's like I'm dreaming of the imaginary friend Katie and I had when we were little. She'd been so real to us as kids. We each remembered Anna, that's what we'd called her, just like we remembered bits of our parents. But now, in this dreamscape of Paradise Lost, our imaginary third twin has all grown up. — Beatrice Rose Roberts

Age is real life is short. It's foolhardy to deny it. We grow up, our bodies grow frail, death is coming. There's so much I want to do!
There's a whole world out there I havent seen, ppl I havent met and who havent know me.
God, there 're a million books I want to read.
I dont want to sleep ... I want to be awake.
This is my life - I want to live it — Mary Alice Monroe

He's given me that silver pocket watch and I'd carried it everywhere. I'd loved it--until things got worse and its ticking sounded more like dark footsteps coming up behind me. I loved the watch until I started hating time. And how it ran out. — Dan Gemeinhart