Don't Understand Death Quotes & Sayings

The way I see Jesus has not changed much at all since I was a child, but my imprisonment and all that followed made me love Him even more. His being the Son of God makes sense to me, because I believe God to be loving, just, forgiving, and merciful. I also believe that He respects free will. After all, He has given it to us so that we can choose to love or hate Him, do good or evil. But is it fair for a loving God to sit on His throne in Heaven and let us struggle and suffer on our own? Would any good father abandon His children this way? It makes perfect sense to me that God decided to come among us, live like us, and die a horribly painful death after being tortured. This is a God I can love with all my heart. A God who sets an example. A God who has bled and whose heart has been broken. This is who Jesus is to me. I don't pretend that I understand the Holy Trinity. But I understand love and sacrifice. I understand faithfulness. — Marina Nemat

If your husband died, and he loved cardinals, and on the anniversary of his death you happen to walk out to his memorial and you find a cardinal sitting on it, you are allowed to take this as a sign. Don't let some voice inside you tell you that the cardinal's presence there is a coincidence. Not unless you understand the word coincidence, which means two things occupying one place, in terms of the deeper and better term, synchronicity. "If you smile at me," a line — Eben Alexander

It's a change, and I don't like changes, especially changes I don't understand.'
'Life is change,' the Fool observed lacidly. 'And death is an even greater change. I think we must resign ourselves to change, Fitz.'
'I'm tired of resigning myself to things. My entire life has been one long resignation. — Robin Hobb

I was covered in scars from the beatings, and she used to say it was a hockey ... She'd apologize. She was on pain. I understand that now, but you don't when you are three and four and you're being beaten to death with a hoover. — Brenda Fricker

I don't want anything from you, Edward. If you'd only told me you were still in love with Emma - '

'You don't understand,' he interrupts. 'It was like an illness. I hated myself every second I was with her. — J.P. Delaney

I was facing him before the last word was out, but I should have been dead by then. In a way I did die, right there, all that time ago, and this is a ghost who has been telling you stories and drinking your wine. You don't understand. Never mind. — Peter S. Beagle

This two-way hatred. I don't understand it. I wonder how much of it is caused by fear? — Judy Blume

Then the girl spoke to the child. She told him she'd rather it remain this way between them.
That she'd rather their story not move from this place, even if the child didn't understand her; that it remain in this desire, even if that meant she put herself to death. Not a real death, mind you, but a dead death, where you don't hurt, where you're never sad, you're never punished, nothing.
She said, 'It should be completely impossible.'
She said, 'It should be desperate. — Marguerite Duras

I am sorry,' said Frodo. But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.'
You have not seen him,' Gandalf broke in.
'No, and I don't want to, said Frodo. 'I can't understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.'
'Deserves it!' I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all end. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Life is like an iceberg. Ninety percent is under the water, invisible to the naked eye. The only way to understand the supernatural world is through the Bible. I don't know how I existed without knowing God, or living in His love 24/7, or experiencing His peace no matter what the circumstances, or gaining His wisdom in all of life's choices. I can honestly say I now have no fear of lack, sickness, or even death. — Sid Roth

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to born both within ourselves and within the world; we would know that the Kingdom of God is what we all of us hunger for above all other things even when we don't know its name or realize that it's what we're starving to death for. The Kingdom of God is where our best dreams come from and our truest prayers. We glimpse it at those moments when we find ourselves being better than we are and wiser than we know. We catch sight of it when at some moment of crisis a strength seems to come to us that is greater than our own strength. The Kingdom of God is where we belong. It is home, and whether we realize it or not, I think we are all of us homesick for it. — Frederick Buechner

I don't think you will ever be able to understand what it is like - the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation - to be abandoned in a deep well in the middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome by intense pain in total darkness. I went so far as to regret that the Mongolian noncom had not simply shot me and got it over with. If I had been killed that way, at least they would have been aware of my death. If I died here, however, it would be truly a lonely death, a death of no concern to anyone, a silent death. — Haruki Murakami

Mom says death is as natural as birth, and it's all part of the life cycle.
She says we don't really understand it, but there are many things we don't understand, and we just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have.
I guess that makes sense. — Bill Watterson

Bonnie Rae, you've got a visitor downstairs. And if you don't show your face right away, he's going to kill me. And it won't be a quick death. It will be a mauling. Do you understand?"
"Huh?"
"Bear's here, and he's loaded for . . . well, bear."
"Bear's here?" she shot straight up in bed, immediately awake, and made for the door, bare legs flying, oversized T-shirt slipping off her slim shoulders.
"Bonnie!" She halted and turned in question. "If you want me to live, pull on some pants and do something with your hair. Please. — Amy Harmon

I don't understand this gap you see between us, but can't you meet me somewhere in the middle?"
"The middle of what?"
"I don't know, the middle of tomorrow and forever, the middle of life and death, the middle of normal and paranormal. Where we've always been."
I bit my lip, nodding against his forehead. "There's a place for us there, right?"
"Always." He put his lips to mine, sealing our own little spot in the world. Together. — Kiersten White

You don't have friends in here, you'll soon come to understand that. You get attached to someone, then you'll just lose them. They'll get shanked or they'll jump or they'll be taken one night. — Alexander Gordon Smith

I am pressed to admit that I don't have the capacity to understand the bloodied horrors of a cross and the wild exhilaration of an empty tomb. But at the point that I think I completely understand God, I have at that very point humanized Him and in that very action I have lost Him. Therefore, I much prefer to simply marvel. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I don't think you understand what it means when a demon falls in love, Layla. It doesn't go away. It doesn't fade, even if we want to. We love until death. That's not just something we say. We love and we love once and it's forever. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death. — Meghan O'Rourke

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away. — Hedy Lamarr

I'm not a coward." He tries to convince me, as if I'd already called him the name. "It wasn't the fear of death that drove me ... it was captivity. Like you, I cannot be a spirit contained. I must be free. You understand, don't you? — A.G. Howard

For many of us, the effects of this fallen world seem like distant theological concepts that carry little weight in everyday life. As a result, we live with expectations befitting a pre-fall Eden, rather than a sin-broken Earth. We expect to live healthy, fulfilled lives. We expect to have marriages in which we perfectly understand and communicate with our spouses. We expect to become pregnant easily, carry our babies full-term, and deliver them in perfect health. Our hearts yearn for the creation to function as God intended it to, and thus we don't naturally expect pain, discord, or death. Yet, this is exactly the inescapable inheritance we've received from our first parents. — Jessalyn Hutto

Unless you have suffered and wept, you really don't understand what compassion is, nor can you give comfort to someone who is suffering. If you haven't cried, you can't dry another's eyes. Unless you've walked in darkness, you can't help wanderers find the way. Unless you've looked into the eyes of menacing death and felt its hot breath, you can't help another rise from the dead and taste anew the joy of being alive. — Takashi Nagai

Words are really a mask,' he said. 'They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it. If you can live in fantasy, then you don't need religion, since with fantasy you can understand that after death, man is reincorporated in the Universe. Once again I will say that it is not important to know whether there is something beyond this life. What counts is having done the right sort of work; if that is right, then everything else will be all right. The Universe, or Nature, is for me what God is for others. It is wrong to think that Nature is the enemy of man, something to be conquered. Rather, we should look upon Nature as a mother, and should peaceably surrender ourselves to it. If we take that attitude, we will simply feel that we are returning to the Universe as all other things do, all animals and plants. We are all just infinitesimal parts of the Whole. It is absurd to rebel; we must deliver ourselves up to the great current ... — Miguel Serrano

We can't lose you," she said after a few moments of awkward as hell silence. "You have to understand that we aren't doing this because we don't care about Kat. We're doing this because we love you."
"But I love her," I said without hesitation.
Dee's eyes widened, probably since it was the first time she'd herd me say it out loud, well, about anyone other than my family. I wished I had said it more often, especially to Kat. Funny how that kind of shit always turns out in the end. While you're deep in something, you never say or do what you need to. It's always after the fact, when it's too late that you realize what you've should've said or done/
It couldn't be too late. I knew that. The fact that I was still alive was testament to that. Like Dee said, though, there were worse things than death. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The spiritual energy of our time, as I've come to understand it, is not a rejection of the rational disciplines by which we've ordered our common life for many decades - law, politics, economics, science. It is, rather, a realization that these disciplines have a limited scope. They can't ask ultimate questions ... they don't begin to tell us how to order our astonishments, what matters in life, what matters in a death, how to love, how we can be of service to each other. These are the kinds of questions religion arose to address and religions traditions are keepers of conversation across generations about them. — Krista Tippett

I don't understand this at all. I don't understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics ... culture ... history ... aren't those natural ingredients in any story, if it's told well? I mean ... ' He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. 'I mean ... can't you guys just let a story be a story? — Stephen King

Now, when he touches me, I feel nothing but Eio, pure and whole and constant. Now, when I look into his eyes, I don't see death- but eternity. For the first time in my life, I am looking into someone's gaze and realizing that not only do I understand what's in his eyes ... he understands whats in mine. — Jessica Khoury

I'm done losing. Do you fucking hear me? I am done losing. Spare me your precious self-pity, because this isn't a stage and I didn't pay two coppers to cry my eyes out over anyone's death speech. You don't fucking get one, understand? I don't care if you cough up buckets of blood. Buckets I can carry. — Scott Lynch

I don't really understand the point about carping about every casualty, every bombing, every death. War is hell. That's why people say war is hell. — Ann Coulter

Why are you afraid of death?

Because you don't understand the perfect love of Jesus.
Because perfect love casts out
fear. — Ivor Myers

I have never been in a war before, but I have seen famine and death. I was asking (myself) what do they feel when they do this? I don't understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do it. I don't understand. — Mother Teresa

I know being with you means my death, but after the night I spent thinking you were dying, I don't care. I need you. Do you understand that? I need you. — Donna Grant

Why do we resist giving help to homeless men? In part because we don't understand how our pressure on men to support families often forces men to take transient jobs that are but a step away from homelessness (the death-of-a-salesman jobs, the migrant worker jobs ... ) and in part because we respond differently to men who fail [than women who fail]. — Warren Farrell

Feel that?" he asked. "You're the first woman who's ever made my heart beat like that. You're the first woman I've ever wanted to spend all my time with, the only one who could convince me to start a new life. You're the first woman who's ever made me genuinely happy. Who makes me glad to be alive, who makes me burn hotter than fire. You're the first woman who's ever made me afraid."
I stared at him. "Afraid?"
"Afraid of how good this is. Afraid it won't last." He pushed a lock of hair off my forehead. "Scared to death of losing you."
"Oh." I was speechless. I swallowed hard. "You're ... You don't have to be scared of losing me."
Something flickered in his expression that I didn't understand, couldn't decipher.
"I don't?" he said.
"No." I shook my head. "No."
"Good." He pulled me closer. "Because you're the first woman I've never wanted to let go. — Nina Lane

To ask any parent to suffer the loss of a child is to ask more than any parent can possibly give. But to deny any individual the right to walk the path they have chosen, because we cannot imagine our lives without them, carries a heavy price. You have never known this because you have never faced this choice. You've never had to sacrifice anything, because of your power to alter reality to suit your whims. I understand this truth. We mortals have tried to soften it in platitudes. 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.' 'Death before dishonor.' In the end, nothing makes it easier to accept. I've given my life once for those I love, and I'm about to do it again. To have made any other choice was to grant fear dominion. Your son is a remarkable individual. Don't ask him to be less than he is. He has made his choice. — Kirsten Beyer

People sometimes find Buddhism pessimistic, saying there is too much talk about death. It's essential to understand that Buddhists don't contemplate death because they are morbid or depressed; they focus on death, mortality, and human frailty as a means of better understanding and appreciating life. — Lama Surya Das

Speak here," Ronan said. "As Ash's guard, I ought to be privy to any plans."

"You are hardly in any shape to function as her guard, my son. Rest, and when you've recovered, you can - "

"I've recovered enough to stay by her side," Ronan said. "Which I will, particularly now, after what happened to the guard you assigned."

"It was not Tarquin's fault," Ashyn said.

"I do not mean to minimize the tragedy of his death," Ronan said. "But he wasn't up to his task. You require better. You require me."

"You have a high opinion of yourself," Edwyn said dryly.

"No, I have a high opinion of the danger Ash faces, and I don't trust anyone else to understand it. Clearly your guard did not expect fiend dogs."

"No one expects fiend dogs," Ashyn said.

"True, but at least you and I expect the unexpected. — Kelley Armstrong

What we want is to make sure that people don't go through what I'm going through ... and we have to understand that even since Luke's death, children have been killed. — Rosie Batty

Istening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts. — Robert L. Wise

Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver." She makes sure I don't speak.
"Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the louder
their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose. — Pierce Brown

It's not that we don't trust you," Royce said as Hadrian prepared the bow. "It's just that we've learned over the years that honor among nobles is usually inversely proportionate to their rank. As a result, we prefer to rely on more concrete methods for motivations - such as self-preservation. You already know we don't want you dead, but if you have ever been riding full tilt and had a horse buckle under you, you understand that death is always a possibility, and broken bones are almost a certainty."
"There's also the danger of missing the horse completely," Hadrian added. "I'm a good shot, but even the best archers have bad days. So to answer your question - yes, you can control your own horse. — Michael J. Sullivan

I haven't been out driving at this time of night in many years, much less in an unfamiliar area. These are the things that scare you as you get older. You understand night all too well, all its attendant meanings. You try to avoid it, work around it, keep it from entering your house. Your weary, ornery body tells you to stay up late, sleep less, keep the lights on, don't go into the bedroom - if you have to sleep, sleep in your chair, at the table. Everything is about avoiding the night. Because of that, I suppose that I should be scared out here in the dark, but I am finally past that, I think.
(p.204) — Michael Zadoorian

Yes, alive," said Fudge. "That is - I don't know - is a man alive if he can't be killed? I don't really understand it, and Dumbledore won't explain properly - but anyway, he's certainly got a body and is walking and talking and killing, so I suppose, for the purposes of our discussion, yes, he's alive. — J.K. Rowling

I'm okay with death, Mo. I'm good with it," Tag said quietly. "But dying...dying is different. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of not being strong for the people who love me. I'm afraid of the suffering I will cause. I'm afraid of the helplessness I'll feel when I can't make it all better. I don't want to sit in a hospital bed, day after day, dying. I don't want Millie trying to take care of me. I don't want Henry watching me fade from giant to shadow. Can you understand that, Mo? — Amy Harmon

People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting, and head shaking and girlfriending and "oh no you didn't" and if they're not sassy, then they're dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and "I don't understand why folks just can't get along." But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred. Do — Ben Aaronovitch

When we die the only judge we have is ourselves. We see our life played out in a hologram of knowledge that our earth souls cannot understand. We see all at once how each word and each action affected the lives of the people around us. How a moment of kindness can change a life and a sharp word can affect someone for ever. Words and actions are far more powerful than we realise. It's the pebble-in-the-lake effect-even the tiniest pebble thrown into water will create ripples right across the lake. We don't need to be punished because, when we have viewed the consequences of our actions on all the souls we have met, we have remorse enough. I believe there is no external judge. We must face ourselves. — Michele Knight

I don't think hell exists. I happen to believe in life after death but I don't think it's got a thing to do with reward and punishment. Religion is always in the control business and that's something which people don't really understand. — John Shelby Spong

You don't understand the true awesomeness of nature until you watch the sun rise on water that stretches across half the world. Or until you lay back on the board in the pitch black of night and listen to the world sleep. Until you feel the tug of water and know that you are dancing with a partner that could dip you into death should it feel the need. It is intoxicating, the heartbeat of the ocean. It flows through my blood, it sucks at my heart and pumps breath through my lungs — Alessandra Torre

It begins by the wives being bored to death because their men are so tired from making money they don't pay any attention to 'em. But when their wives start hollering, instead of trying to understand why, the men just go find a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Then when they get tired of talking about themselves they go back to their wives. Everything's rosy for a while, but the men get tired and their wives start yellin' again and around it goes. Men in this age have turned the Other Woman into a psychiatrist's couch, and at far less expense, too. — Harper Lee

Nimmie, when I realized that I was a sinner, that I could do nothing myself to atone for my sins, I did the only thing one can do - that is necessary to do. I accepted what God has provided for all of mankind - His forgiveness. His forgiveness through the death of His Son, Jesus. He died for our sins so that we need not die for our own. I don't understand that kind of love either, Nimmie. But I know that it's real, for I have felt it. When I prayed to God and asked for His forgiveness and took His Son as my Savior, that love filled my whole person. Where I had had misery and fear before, now I have peace and joy." "And He would do that for me? — Janette Oke

You don't understand death, you learn to acquiesce in death. — Joseph Campbell

Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take. — Don DeLillo

I'm sorry," Leo murmured and then seemed to look through Martin for a few seconds before he returned his gaze to him. "Although if it's any comfort - and please don't take this the wrong way, because I speak from my own perspective, which I understand often places me far outside of the norm - I sometimes like to think that death, at least in the case of those we truly love, allows us to appreciate what they have done for us in ways that are not possible when we're all here, constantly changing and fixated on how to get from one day to the next. Death offers us the chance to reflect on who they were, which of course is a way to understand ourselves. As painful as it can be to see them go - and I don't mean to diminish the sense of loss or grief we all feel - there is also no greater gift. — Matthew Gallaway

Don't be so hard on yourself, You're doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that Mom ever was - The one you wanted, the one she was when you needed her and she was there, the one she was when she didn't understand. Most of us don't live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we're a whole bunch of selves. When someone dies, they all integrate into the soul - the essence of who we are, beyond the different faces we wear throughout our lives. You're just hating the selves you've always hated, and loving the ones you've always loved. It's bound to mess you up. — Christopher Moore

I believe that the greatest truths of the universe don't lie outside, in the study of the stars and the planets. They lie deep within us, in the magnificence of our heart, mind, and soul. Until we understand what is within, we can't understand what is without. — Anita Moorjani

I don't want a moratorium on the death penalty. I want the abolition of it. I can't understand why a country [USA] that's so committed to human rights doesn't find the death penalty an obscenity. — Desmond Tutu

Yes, but perhaps he did have something to do with it." (In such arguments Stenham often found himself unexpectedly extolling the bourgeois virtues.) "If he was good himself, and worked hard - "

"Never!" cried Amar, his eyes blazing. "You're a Nazarene, a Christian. That's why you talk that way. If you were a Moslem and said such things, you'd be killed or struck blind here, this minute. Christians have good hearts, but they don't know anything. They think they can change what has been written. They're afraid to die because they don't understand what death is for. And if you're afraid to die, then you don't know what life is for. How can you live? — Paul Bowles

I notice I am taking risks with my own security and losing my sensitivity to danger. I don't know it at the time, but the effects of war are reaching into me in unexpected ways, and I am being changed by them. I am surrounded by destruction and the randomness of death, which I cannot fathom. I have felt the closeness of death as tangibly as the whisper of a murderous seducer, and felt the richness, twinged by guilt, of having escaped its grasp. I have seen too often the numb lost look of men consumed by undiluted grief, and heard the howl of children as their mothers are pulled from the rubble of a rocket-blasted home, and I am coming to understand the long dark pain of those who silently endure what first seems unendurable. — Jason Elliot

Stories are what death thinks he puts an end to. He can't understand that they end in him, but they don't end with him. — Ursula K. Le Guin

To tell the truth, I don't really understand the causes behind my runner's blues. Or why now it's beginning to fade. It's too early to explain it well. Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about it is this: That's life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what's going on. Like taxes, the tide rising and falling, John Lennon's death, and miscalls by referees at the World Cup. — Haruki Murakami

The Death Eaters were waiting for us," Harry told her. "We were surrounded the moment we took off - they knew it was tonight - I don't know what happened to anyone else, four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort caught up with us - "
He could hear the self-justifying note in his voice, the plea for her to understand why he did not know what had happened to her sons, but
"Thank goodness you're all right," she said, pulling him into a hug he did not feel he deserved.
"Haven't go' any brandy, have yeh, Molly?" asked Hagrid a little shakily. "Fer medicinal purposes?"
She could have summoned it by magic, but as she hurried back toward the crooked house, Harry knew that she wanted to hide her face. — J.K. Rowling

Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay. — Curt Siodmak

Adam said, "Just thinking." And he was thinking with amazement, Why, I'm not afraid of my
brother! I used to be scared to death of him, and I'm not any more. Wonder why not? Could it be the
army? Or the chain gang? Could it be Father's death? Maybe - but I don't understand it. With the lack
of fear, he knew he could say anything he wanted to, whereas before he had picked over his words to
avoid trouble. It was a good feeling he had, almost as though he himself had been dead and
resurrected. — John Steinbeck

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. — David Foster Wallace

It hurts to be around life. People don't understand how close death is, right over their shoulders, around the block, at the end of a street. It's everywhere. — Jessica Sorensen

Can you hear me, Father? Can you understand me?" The eyes did not change or move. "I did it,"
Cal cried. "I'm responsible for Aron's death and for your sickness. I took him to Kate's. I showed him
his mother. That's why he went away. I don't want to do bad things - but I do them. — John Steinbeck

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep with a mixture of angst and gratitude all at the same time. It is finally ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. When the time finally comes, we can be enveloped in a warm cloak of long-awaited acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet days, weeks... or years. — Connie Kerbs

People back home, people who haven't been in war, or at least not that war, sometimes don't seem to understand how the troops in Iraq acted. They're surprised - shocked - to discover we often joked about death, about things we saw. Maybe it seems cruel or inappropriate. Maybe it would be, under different circumstances. But in the context of where we were, it made a lot of sense. We saw terrible things, and lived through terrible things. Part of it was letting off pressure or steam, I'm sure. A way to cope. If you can't make sense of things, you start to look for some other way to deal with them. You laugh because you have to have some emotion, you have to express yourself somehow. — Chris Kyle

Sometimes, stopping a purposeful journey can be very appealing, but that can also be as deadly as death. Pursue with tenacity, strive through the adversities, understand the vicissitudes of life and dare to be a conqueror no matter what, with fortitude and understanding! There is always a moment in a purposeful journey when giving up speaks clearly and convincingly, but when you fix your eyes on the end point, you shall surely see life after all the ups and downs! Don't kill your dreams! Awake! Arise and go! Never give up! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Can you imagine how lonely she must have felt when she received that phone call? Your lover has just died, your companion has abandoned you, but don't you dare make an inappropriate sound, because your family is around. No one to touch you the way he did, no one to understand you, no one to hug you to sleep, but don't dare allow your face to show a glint of grief. The cutting pain of feeling alone amid loved ones. — Rabih Alameddine

You don't understand that one can be an atheist, one can not know whether God exists or why, and at the same time know that man does not live in nature but in history, and that in present-day understanding it was founded by Christ, that its foundation is the Gospel. And what is history? It is the setting in motion of centuries of work at the gradual unriddling of death and its eventual overcoming. Hence the discovery of mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, hence the writing of symphonies. It is impossible to move on in that direction without a certain uplift. These discoveries call for spiritual equipment. The grounds for it are contained in the Gospel. They are these. First, love of one's neighbor, that highest form of living energy, overflowing man's heart and demanding to be let out and spent, and then the main component parts of modern man, without which he is unthinkable
namely, the idea of the free person and the idea of life as sacrifice. — Boris Pasternak

Watching Limelight with my mother really brought home to me the brevity of life. I realized in a little while that I would die and leave everything behind. Unlike vain people, I had the ability to think this right through. I had no difficulty in picturing full theatres and cinemas long after myself was gone. Not everybody can do that. Many are so intoxicated with sensual impressions that they're not able to grasp that there is a world out there. And therefore they're not able to comprehend the opposite either - they don't understand that one day the world will end. We, however, are only a few missing heartbeats away from being divorced from humanity forever. — Jostein Gaarder

And you wish to protect a beautiful princess, with whom you have fallen in love. But do you understand how dire the situation is? He life and the lives of her sisters are hanging in the balance. You yourself risk death if you choose this path."
"I don't care," Oliver said. He stood up and faced the bishop. "I don't care! I love Petunia, and this is what I'm choosing, right here and now. — Jessica Day George

Death, torture and prison are part of daily life for the youth of Iran. They are not like us, my friends and I at their age; they are not scared. They are not what we were. They hold hands and scream: 'Don't be afraid! Don't be afraid! We are together!' They understand that no one will give them their rights; they must go get them. — Marjane Satrapi

Rich people don't have to have a life-and-death relationship with the truth and its questions; they can ignore the truth and still thrive materially. I am not surprised many of them understand literature only as an ornament. Life is an ornament to them, relationships are ornaments, their "work" is but a flimsy, pretty ornament meant to momentarily thrill and capture attention. Why didn't I reread my F. Scott Fitzgerald sooner? I might have saved myself some time. — Sergio Troncoso

Do dogs understand death? Do they have souls? Do they go to heaven? I have alway believed so, but this [event] confirmed that all of God's creatures , humans and animals, have a soul and that we will all be reunited in heaven. My pastor once told me, "If there are no dogs in heaven, I don't want to go." I agree. — Glenwood McNabb

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

You know I don't understand what you mean, right?" I asked.
"I'm counting on it," she said, and then her eyes focused behind me. "I think your friends are upset that I've stolen you."
Suddenly I could feel all their eyes boring into my back. For once, it didn't bother me at all.
"They'll survive."
She grinned. "I may not give you back, though."
I swallowed too loud and she laughed. — Stephenie Meyer

Don't misunderstand. There is no abandoning, or being abandoning. And you're not owned by your parents, either. You should understand ... that you have no other master besides yourself. No one was forcing you to wait for a slow death ... in such a lonely place. — Minari Endou

Love, I don't understand, I tried I swear, but I can't see why. You were here, and I was there, we were us, and then.. You were gone, leaving me here to deal with this life alone. — Anya

The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact. — Yuval Noah Harari

I don't understand death. For that matter, I don't really understand life. You live. You suffer. You die. It hardly seems worth doing. Yet, here I am, robotically taking a fresh breath every few seconds, standing in this awkward brown and orange polyester waitress uniform, pretending to listen to Mr. Chester go on about his bunions for the second time this week, pouring the evening's thirty-second cup of coffee and trying so hard to put the events of the last four weeks behind me. — C.A. Deyton

A filmmaker doesn't have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don't have to die to shoot a death scene. — David Lynch

You don't understand. How could you? We were in the worst sort of hell. We weren't living day to day or even hour to hour. We survived minute by excruciating minute. The next day was an eternity away and we didn't want it. Death wasn't the enemy. It was our salvation. — Maya Banks

Because you are not scared to admit out loud that you're afraid. Or to ask questions ... and because you know that your husband is in pain, you will go to him and not threaten his ability to provide with words that cut and burn in another's mind forever, until death do you apart. Because you will tell him that its right for him to change profession and that it is not his fault that the shoe he first brought to your marriage no longer fits. You'll say that you don't care what your parents think , or people think, and material things can always be replaced, but not him. And because you will have the patience and wisdom to understand everything that he is afraid of, you'll kiss his boo-boos instead of rubbing salt in the wounds of his failures ... — Leslie Esdaile

I don't understand how I can always want to sleep, hate waking up, and yet be afraid of death. — Mike Heil

You're part of the human fabric of experience. You don't have to have cancer to write about cancer. You don't have to have somebody close to you die to understand what death is. Definitely, the more you live, the more experiences fall into your spectrum. As a writer, you must have been told: Write about what you know. But Kafka didn't. Gogol didn't. Did Shakespeare write only what he knew? Our own selves are limitless. And our capacity for empathy is giant. — Regina Spektor

The first undeniable reality is that every living thing dies, and the second undeniable reality is that we suffer throughout our lives because we don't understand death. The truth derived from these two points is the importance of clarifying the matter of birth and death. The third undeniable reality is that all of the thoughts and feelings that arise in my head simply arise haphazardly, by chance. And the conclusion we can derive from that is not to hold on to all that comes up in our head. That is what we are doing when we sit zazen. — Kosho Uchiyama

We'd thought the same, once. We'd deceived ourselves into thinking we were the masters, that every force bowed to our command. And what happened? They destroyed everything!'
'I don't-'
'Understand! I see that! They are conjurations - manifestations - they exist to warn you. They are the proof that all that you think to enslave will turn on you.' And it backed away. 'The end begins again, it begins again.'
Cotillion stepped forward. 'Light, Dark and Shadow - these three - are you saying-'
'Three?' Tulas Shorn laughed with savage bitterness. 'What then of Life? Fire and Stone and Wind? What, you fools, of the Hounds of Death? Manifestations, I said. They will turn - they are telling you that! That is why they exist! The fangs, the fury - all that is implacable in nature - each aspect but a variation, a hue in the maelstrom of destruction! — Steven Erikson

We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death. — Orson Scott Card

If you have felt that way," said Juliet, "how can you despise her?"

"I still don't understand why you have suddenly decided that we don't all deserve death and suffering," said Runajo. "How recently did you tell me that we lived in a charnel house?"

Through the bond, she felt something like a flinch from Juliet. Then there was silence, and the sense of a wall between them.

After several moments, Juliet said quietly, "I do not - perhaps - wish to see you dead."

"That's boring and inconstant," said Runajo. "If we deserve death, then wish us dead. Don't indulge in half measures and wish us alive to keep on killing. — Rosamund Hodge

All this is always for nothing," he says. "Don't you understand that yet? Every death is a pointless death; every battle should have been avoided. But if Edward can defeat the queen, and imprison her along with her husband, then it will indeed be over. — Philippa Gregory

You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. — J.K. Rowling

My dear Socrates ... you know why they are putting you to death? It is because you make people feel stupid for blindly following habits, instincts, and traditions. You may be occasionally right. But you may confuse them about things they've been doing just fine without getting in trouble. You are destroying people's illusions about themselves. You are taking the joy of ignorance out of the things we don't understand. And you have no answer; you have no answer to offer them. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Do you know that the Sufis believe the world is a mother's womb? she asks. We are all babies in a womb. When the time comes we have to leave the world. We know this but we don't want to leave. We fear that when we die we will cease to exist. But death is actually a birth. If we could understand this we wouldn't be scared of anything. — Elif Shafak

My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorse - and, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth of - a proposition that I don't understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch: E doesn't equal mc2, it doesn't, it doesn't! I was lying, so there! — Daniel Dennett

I don't want anyone else to understand it, because you only understand it when you have been welcomed into a club only the saddest people can enter. The cost of admission is the death of your loved one at the hands of someone else. — Dave Cullen

Charlie started crying, in the convulsive, soundless way that men do. "Don't you understand," he said after composing himself, "that's a funeral dirge for the first wave." We all thought about that, the many lives lost before we even opened our eyes this morning. — Suzanne Hayes

You know, Grace, it's queer but I don't feel narrow. I feel broad. How can I explain it to you, so you would understand? I've seen everything ... and I've hardly been away from this yard ...
I've been part of the beginning and part of the growth. I've married ... and borne children and looked into the face of death. Is childbirth narrow, Grace? Or marriage? Or death? When you've experienced all those things, Grace, the spirit has traveled although the body has been confined. I think travel is a rare privilege and I'm glad you can have it. But not every one who stays at home is narrow and not every one who travels is broad. I think if you can understand humanity ... can sympathize with every creature ... can put yourself into the personality of every one ... you're not narrow ... you're broad. — Bess Streeter Aldrich