Dying To Go Home Quotes & Sayings

I am merely a poet dying far from home. — Dan Simmons

Jason smiled. The sound of wings was louder now, the fluttering of angels come to carry him home. — Robert Ferrigno

I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy, and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa, and I can only stay home and knit like a poky old woman (Josephine) — Louisa May Alcott

How the hell was she going to fight them?
With style. She could almost hear Niko's voice. She grinned, despite herself. Do try not to die, won't you? That was Tyler. It would have been followed by a delicate yawn. And Oz: Keep your head down and don't be stupid. Lise: Bitch, do not even think about leaving me alone with all this testosterone. Giselle: You can't win if you die, so suck it up. Tutresiel: Princess, you aren't even trying if you're dying.
And Alexander: Come home. — Diana Pharaoh Francis

When I was up there, stranded by myself, did I think I was going to die? Yes. Absolutely, and that's what you need to know going in because it's going to happen to you. This is space. It does not cooperate. At some point everything is going to go south on you. Everything is going to go south and you're going to say 'This is it. This is how I end.' Now you can either accept that or you can get to work. That's all it is. You just begin. You do the math, you solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and then the next and if you solve enough problems you get to come home. — Andy Weir

Connie went slowly home to Wragby. 'Home!'...it was a warm word to use for that great, weary warren. But then it was a word that had had its day. It was somehow cancelled. All the great words, it seemed to Connie, were cancelled for her generation: love, joy, happiness, home, mother, father, husband, all these great, dynamic words were half dead now, and dying from day to day. Home was a place you lived in, love was a thing you didn't fool yourself about, joy was a word you applied to a good Charleston, happiness was a term of hypocrisy used to bluff other people, a father was an individual who enjoyed his own existence, a husband was a man you lived with and kept going in spirits. As for sex, the last of the great words, it was just a cocktail term for an excitement that bucked you up for a while, then left you more raggy than ever. Frayed! It was as if the very material you were made of was cheap stuff, and was fraying out to nothing. — D.H. Lawrence

Participation in the dance was entirely voluntary, a mental vow to worship the Mystery in this manner being expressed by a man ardently desiring the recovery of a sick relative; or surrounded by an enemy with escape apparently impossible; or, it might be, dying of hunger ... since some inscrutable power had swept all game from forest and prairie. Others joined in the ceremony in the hope and firm belief that the Mystery ... would grant them successes against the enemy and consequent eminence at home. — Edward S. Curtis

Grief is part of my human experience. There will always be loss during my lifetime. Loss has come in a variety of forms to me - such as death, divorce, losing a job, and selling a beloved home. Each event brought me new opportunities and experiences that would not have been possible otherwise. — Lisa J. Shultz

Money, prestige, possessions, a home with two and a half bathrooms - these aren't the guiding lights of the universe that show us our path. How can we dedicate our lives to such things when we can see the impermanence of everything above and below us, in the flicker of a dying star or the decay of a rotting log? — Ken Ilgunas

But God's love is big enough to touch any life, to make light out of any darkness. Jesus came that we might have life, so that no more would we have to die in depression, anger or pain. He loved people back to life. He would go anywhere, talk to anyone. And wherever He went, He would stop for the one
the forgotten one, the one who was rejected, outcast, sick, even stone dead. Even a thief who was dying for his crimes on the cross next to Him. In the Kingdom of God's love there is no sinner who cannot come home. — Heidi Baker

It is hard to lose the people we love ,but feeling sorry they died is selfish.Dying is going heaven home to God we know your papa is in heaven with our Lady and Jesus.Let us try to be happy for him. — Maryanne Raphael

The Foundling Hospital was established in 1741 by a businessman and philanthropist named Thomas Coram as a children's home for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." He was moved to establish it by the sight of abandoned babies and young children starving and dying on the streets of London. Today, part of the site the Foundling Hospital stood on is a children's playground near the world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. The Foundling Hospital itself has gone, but the charitable organization behind it still exists, now known as the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, or simply Coram. — Ian Graham

Everyone should feel comfortable they are going to remain in their homes until their dying days. We should never be uneasy or unsure of where our home is in the United States of America. — Tit Elingtin

The ancients said that for persons who cultivated body and mind, and who are virtuous and honorable, death is an experience of liberation, a long-awaited rest from a lifetime of labors. Death helps the unscrupulous person to put an end to the misery of desire. Death, then, for everyone is a kind of homecoming. That is why the ancient sages speak of a dying person as a person who is 'going home. — Liezi

Diamond Jubilee with him for extra contrition. Her father was clearly exhausted, sleeping almost all the time now, like an aged dog. Why didn't he just go? Was he hanging on for a hundred? Two more years of this? It was mere existence - an amoeba had more life. "The triumph of the human spirit," the new nursing sister said, new enough to talk about "positive outcomes" and "enhancement programmes" - emollient management-speak, meaningless to most of the residents of Poplar Hill, who were either dying or demented or both. It was called a "care home" but there was precious little of either to be had when you were run by a profit-based health-care provider employing — Kate Atkinson

Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, the way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, the way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home - all this is God's love in the world today. — Mother Teresa

When Jo's conservative sister Meg says she must turn up her hair now that she is a "young lady," Jo shouts, "I'm not! and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty ... I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China aster! It's bad enough to be a girl anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman. — Louisa May Alcott

Rin thought of the crossbow bolt. Of the whoosh and sting of wind and fire heat and the man who would have killed her. Of pushing in front of Enna. Of almost dying. Of home and Ma and being farther away than the lands in tales, and maybe never going home. Of standing by a strange tree in a faraway wood with girls who spoke the language of fire. Of a queen of Kel who wanted them dead. — Shannon Hale

In 1965, I went to what was called the worst Bihar famine in India, and I saw starvation, death, people dying of hunger, for the first time. It changed my life. I came back home, told my mother, 'I'd like to live and work in a village.' Mother went into a coma. — Bunker Roy

Dying is a very simple thing. I've looked at death and really I know. If I should have died it would have been very easy for me. Quite the easiest thing I ever did. But the people at home do not realize that. They suffer a thousand times more. — Ernest Hemingway,

This ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn't. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations ... — Christopher McDougall

So that he seemed not to relinquish life, but to leave one home for another. — Cornelius Nepos

During the last week of her father's life, Blanca stayed home with him. 'I didn't bathe. I didn't sleep. I sat in the bed with him in the living room. And we were communicating all the time. I kept thinking, and it's more beautiful in Spanish, but I wanted to bottle his breathing. — Kevin Renner

Just when I think you've hit bottom you continue to amaze me," Kyle said. "Or, does this get worse? Nothing would surprise me after this. Are you sleeping with a married man whose wife is dying of cancer?"
Elroy didn't think he'd done anything wrong. "I know nothing about his wife, or his husband for that matter. I don't ask and I'm not out to break up his home. Lighten up, man. Everybody does it. It's not like I'm going to freaking marry this dude. I'm only having a little fun with him. You wanna come with me? We'll have a three-way. You should see the way this guy moves. It will blow your mind."
With that remark Kyle shoved his hands into his pockets and walked faster. "No, thank you. That's not something I'm interested in doing. Meeting nice, decent people is the only thing that blows my mind. I just hope you're using condoms, you goddman asshole. — Ryan Field

About the presence of death and dying I don't remember the society in the 1950s being so skittish as it has since become. People still died at home, among relatives and friends, often in the care of a family physician. Death was still to be seen sitting in the parlor, hanging in a butcher shop, sometimes lying in the street. — Lewis H. Lapham

I understood him. He wanted to die at home. He didn't want to be going someplace all the time for the sake of a hopeless hope. He wanted to die as himself out of his life. He didn't want his death to be the end of a technological process. — Wendell Berry

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

You're getting ahead of yourself, Danika!" she said bracingly. "One thing at a time. Those home things can be wrong! Don't panic until it's time to panic! Maybe you're just dying of some horrible disease and you aren't even pregnant at all? — Madelaine Montague

The triumph of the human spirit," the new nursing sister said, new enough to talk about "positive outcomes" and "enhancement programmes" - emollient management-speak, meaningless to most of the residents of Poplar Hill, who were either dying or demented or both. It was called a "care home" but there was precious little of either to be had when you were run by a profit-based health-care provider employing minimum-wage staff. — Kate Atkinson

In the late 1940s, Saunders had tended to a Jewish refugee from Warsaw dying of cancer in London. The man had left Saunders his life savings - £500 - with a desire to be "a window in [her] home."577 — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises. — Chief Joseph

but here I am, in this study that looks across a road well travelled in the rushing mornings to work, and hardly travelled with such anxiety and intent during the hours that come before the rush to work, walked on, and peed on, by the homeless, and the prostitutes and the pimps, and the men and women going home to apartments in the sky, surrounding and overlooking Moss Park park, as I like to call it. Moss Park park is where life stretches out itself on its back, prostrate in filthy, hopeless, bouts of heroism and stardom, for these men who lie on the benches and the dying grass, are heroes to themselves and to one another, — Austin Clarke

In this life, nobody has forever in which to leave home, to return, to make a new home, or to open the door to someone. Death doesn't wait while we tidy everything up. And there are several kinds of dying. — Jean Little

Shall we go to Paris next spring? You will certainly be well by then. I agree that Dr. Tapper is far more intelligent and sensible than many of his profession. If he tells you that you are not to be slogging through the Wissahickon in this weather, you must deisit with your daily slog. Your lungs are fragile, my love. I would not have you expiring for a sight of interesting lichen. Love is one of two things worth dying for.I have yet to decide on the second.It is most certainly not colorful fungus.
I shall be home as soon as this business is settled, certainly no more than a week.My mother complains that you will not have her to dinner. Good for you. Take pity on Hamilton's new wife and have her to tea.Fire the cook, please.I cannot face another dish of sweetbreads.
With all my love always,
Edward — Melissa Jensen

He let go of the rope one hand at a time and latched onto Lisa's hands. Her fingernails dug into his wrists, but her grip was strong after a summer of lifting girls into the air. It was a tug of war battle between his friends and Shawn's ghost. The wind died down as Shawn gathered all of his energy to pull on Mike. Even though he was terrified of what was happening, Mike knew that Shawn wasn't trying to hurt him. After all these years, he was still trying to find a way out. Shawn wanted to go home too, and he saw the hope of being rescued falling away.
"Shawn! Please! Let me go!" Mike called over the dying wind, "I'll get you help! We'll get you out! Just please! Let me go!"

- Saving Hascal's Horrors — Laura Smith

And the fact was that he remembered once thinking that he was fine with dying anywhere at any time ... but now, gazing at each corpse in turn, he thought with all his heart, I'm glad I didn't die there. I have to go home. I've still got things to do. — Yukako Kabei

I know it's hard when other children are called home but we can find purpose and good in all things when we can see things from the Lord's perspective. There is goodness to be found and lives are still touched and changed for the good when little ones go home to Heavenly Father. My sister was 7 when she returned to him. Her passing gave me the strength to be who I am today. Every experience we have had in our lives has made us the strong women we are today.
The Lord is strengthening those families as they pass through these trials just as He does us. — Laura Lane

Don't go far off, not even for a day,
because I don't know how to say it - a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in
an empty station when the trains are
parked off somewhere else, asleep.
Don't leave me, even for an hour, because then
the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.
Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve
on the beach, may your eyelids never flutter
into the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me for
a second, my dearest, because in that moment you'll
have gone so far I'll wander mazily
over all the earth, asking, will you
come back? Will you leave me here, dying? — Pablo Neruda

I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain of dying. I would help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs.Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true. — Shirley Jackson

Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I'll feel right at home. — Charles Sheffield

Patriotism
Breathes there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
'This is my own, my native land!'
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung. — Walter Scott

Whatever he had lost, be it his money, his friends, his reputation, his self-respect, his inner joy and peace - one or all - he still remained his father's child. And so he says to himself: "How many of my father's hired men have all the food they want and more, and here am I dying of hunger! I will leave this place and go to my father and say: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired men." With these words in his heart, he was able to turn, to leave the foreign country, and go home. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Darling gave him a sad smile. "Maris and I have been to hell and home together. Back to back, we have defended each other with everything we possess. Anytime we needed to turn to someone, we called each other. Until today. When he thought he was dying, it was your voice he wanted to hear last. Not mine. Honestly, a part of me is a little hurt. I've never had to share him before with anyone. But I love him enough to let him go. His happiness means everything to me." "Me, too." Darling hugged him close. "Thank you for calling me." "Thank you for saving him." He pulled back and offered his hand to Ture. "Brothers?" "Brothers." * — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You will," said Vorkosigan wearily, "sit in that fortified palace that half the engineers are going to be tied up constructing, and party in it, and let your men do your dying for you, until you've bought your ground by the sheer weight of the corpses piled on it, because that's the kind of soldiering your mentor has taught you. And then send bulletins home about your great victory. Maybe you can have the casualty lists declared top secret." "Aral, careful," warned Vorhalas, shocked. — Lois McMaster Bujold

It's like they say about soldiers coming back from war. People all around you are dying. Really dying, Eric. You go in for a week's chemotherapy and you're in a ward with people who are really, actually dying, there and then and doing their best to come to terms with it. When the week's up, you go home and you see your family and your friends and everything's normal and familiar. It's too much. You think - one world can't possibly hold both these lives and you feel like you're going to go crazy when you realise the world is that big and it can fill with the most terrible things whenever it wants to. — Steven Hall

Oh, I would say, you've never understood me, Harry, that not out of vengeance have I accomplished all my sins but because something has always been close to dying in my soul, and I've sinned only in order to lie down in darkness and find, somewhere in the net of dreams, a new father, a new home. — William Styron

It happened in the autumn of the year, when murder feels at home, because so many other things are dying. — Phillip DePoy

Everyone is always leaving each other, chasing down the next seeming opportunity - home or body. Where does it stop? Does it ever? I want to believe it all leads to something grander than the imagination, grander than the end-stop of the Pacific. Or is that it: You get to the place where you land; you are tired now; you settle. You settle. You build a home and raise a family. There are years of eating and arguing, working and waking. There are years of dying. No one knows what the last image will be. — Bich Minh Nguyen

In the artifacts that are conscious, memories of vanished lives still flicker. Tissues that were changed without dying hold the moment that a boy heard his sister was leaving home. They hold multiplication tables. They hold images of sexuality and violence and beauty. They hold the memories of flesh that no longer exists. They hold metaphors: mitochondria, starfish, Hitler's-brain-in-a-jar, hell realm. They dream. Structures that were neurons twitch and loop and burn and dream. Images and words and pain and fear, endless. — James S.A. Corey

My biggest nightmare is I'm driving home and get sick and go to hospital. I say: 'Please help me.' And the people say: 'Hey, you look like ... ' And I'm dying while they're wondering whether I'm Barbra Streisand. — Barbra Streisand

Maybe I could use a little metal on the inside, I thought. If I'd kept my heart better armored, where would I be now?
Easy - I'd be at home, medicating myself into a monotone. Drowning my sorrows in video games. Working shifts at Smart Aid. Dying inside, day by day, from regret. — Ransom Riggs

I did a film called 'Floating' early on that had a scene which was similar to a real-life situation I was in at the time. It involved me having a conversation with my father, who was dying. It was close to home and it made me realise acting wasn't just making faces for the cameras, it was a real art form. — Norman Reedus

When you're dying, the unicorn up in heaven gets a note from an angel telling her there's a person who's going to need a ride up soon. The unicorn finds out what the person likes. Favorite foods and books, colors and activities, pets and games. She gets a room ready for him, or her, near people who she knows they'll enjoy being with, maybe other friends and family who have died before.
When the unicorn is done, she jumps off of heaven's perch, flies through the blue sky, around the clouds, over any rainbows, and down to the person. She's invisible to everyone. She patiently waits. When the person dies, she gathers them up on her back, using her hooves and horn. All of a sudden, they sit up straight and smile, they laugh, because they're on top of a unicorn and alive again. They hold on tight to her golden reins and the unicorn takes them to their new home, where they're happy. — Cathy Lamb

I wrapped up my food to take home. "Let's go. We need to discuss your favorite method of dying, because I'm going to kill you. Just so you know."

Claire grinned. "You're welcome."

~Gray — Patricia B. Tighe

Return to Shaoshan I regret the passing, the dying, of the vague dream: my native orchards thirty-two years ago. Yet red banners roused the serfs, who seized three-pronged lances when the warlords raised whips in their black hands. We were brave and sacrifice was easy and we asked the sun, the moon, to alter the sky. Now I see a thousand waves of beans and rice and am happy. In the evening haze heroes are coming home. — Mao Zedong

I am thinking that I don't want this to happen. I don't want to die. I don't want my friends to die. And to be honest, as the time slows down and my hands are in the air, I am afforded the chance to think one more thought, and I think about her. I blame her for this ridiculous, fatal chase
for putting us at risk, for making me into the kind of jackass who would stay up all night and drive too fast. I would not be dying were it not for her. I would have stayed home, as I have always stayed home, and I would've been safe, and I would have done the one thing I have always wanted to do, which is to grow up. — John Green

When I spoke to a colleague about Joe's report, her face registered surprise. She said, "Is it possible for a death in a nursing home to be premature?"
Joe told me, "If it were happening in any other kind of institution, to any other part of the population - workers, say, or children - there'd be an outcry, media, inquiries, swift intervention. The truth is we do not value the last months or years of a person's life. The remaining life of someone old. Particularly if they are in residential care."
If we are all just economic units who lift or lean, then very little is "lost" when a nursing home resident or anyone getting on in their years dies prematurely. In fact money might be saved - one less nursing-home bed to fund, and the kids can finally get their hands on the house. — Karen Hitchcock

Her close friends have gathered.
Lord, ain't it a shame
Grieving together
Sharing the blame.
But when she was dying
Lord, we let her down.
There's no use cryin'
It can't help her now.

The party's all over
Drink up and go home.
It's too late to love her
And leave her alone.

Just say she was someone
Lord, so far from home
Whose life was so lonesome
She died all alone
Who dreamed pretty dreams
That never came true
Lord, why was she born
So black and blue?
Oh, why was she born
So black and blue?

Epitaph (Black And Blue)
Written by: Kris Kristofferson
Note: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin. — Kris Kristofferson

The difficulty is not that great to die for a friend, the hard part is finding a friend worth dying for. — Henry Home

Climate change is not a major issue because it will cause sea level rises or temperature increases, since we know how to live at higher elevations and regulate the temperature within our homes. It is a major issue because ecosystems are finding it difficult to adapt to the rapidity of the climate and environmental changes and are dying off, thereby accelerating the species extinction that is already underway due to our consumption habits. — Shailesh Rao

We walk on the ground and give sparse recognition to the mud that will be the eternal homes for the bodies that we praise so much. Ground might not worth much but it holds billions of history and some of humanity's greatest treasures, One day it will become our permanent home. Maybe we should begin a mud religion and give reverence to the dirt, in the end, it is the dirt, ground and Mother Earth that wins and reigns supreme throughout the centuries. — Crystal Evans

Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting. A careful nod to the certainty of today, the mystery of tomorrow. When a friend left, with little chance of seeing home, they said anoshe. When a loved one was dying, they said anoshe. When corpses were burned, bodies given back to the earth and souls to the stream, those left grieving said anoshe.

Anoshe brought solace. And hope. And the strength to let go. — V.E Schwab

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire. — Laurie Penny

The death toll from health care screwups adds up to at least 500,000 Americans annually. That is the equivalent of more than three jumbo jets crashing every day of the year (or over 1,000 jets annually). Because these individuals are dying at home, in hospitals, or in nursing homes, no one is counting the bodies. There is no outrage, no plan to change a system that allows too many to die unnecessarily. The medical profession seems largely immune to the consequences of its errors. — Joe Graedon

There in the sweet sacking smell of the mail bags he understood that he was dying, and it pleased him that he was going in the company of so many soft words home. — Chris Cleave

I wonder if this is it. If I have finally flown too far from home. I think of Ramonda and Ororo. Zuri and W'Kabi. Father and S'yan. But above all, I think of you. and I think of dying out here, of drifting out here, in search of but far away from you. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Knowledge is the key to stopping the spread of AIDS. Yet millions of children are missing an education. Missing their teachers who have died of the disease. Missing from class as they stay home to care for their dying mothers and fathers. Children are missing your support. United for Children. Unite against AIDS. — Susan Sarandon

Although mindfulness does not remove the ups and downs of life, it changes how experiences like losing a job, getting a divorce, struggling at home or at school, births, marriages, illnesses, death and dying influence you and how you influence the experience. . . . In other words, mindfulness changes your relationship to life. — Ken Robinson

Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die? — Charles Lindbergh

No one wants to go into a nursing home. My patients fear it; families often feel terrible guilt when the time comes: it is thought of as an abandonment. Nursing homes are where we place our bad outcomes, our frail, our no-longer-independents. They are places people go to wait safely to die. The old doubly incontinents. You might have stood up to Stalin, you might still read Tolstoy, but if you're losing it from both the front and back and you're not a two-year-old, you're going to be hidden away.
"Don't know the nursing homes, they do a pretty good job," a geriatrician said to me. And most of the time they perform their function: as a holding bay for old people. Most of the time. — Karen Hitchcock

Three days a week she helped at the Manor Nursing Home, where people proved their keenness by reciting received analyses of current events. All the Manor residents watched television day and night, informed to the eyeballs like everyone else and rushed for time, toward what end no one asked. Their cupidity and self-love were no worse than anyone else's, but their many experiences' having taught them so little irked Lou. One hated tourists, another southerners; another despised immigrants. Even dying, they still held themselves in highest regard. Lou would have to watch herself. For this way of thinking began to look like human nature
as if each person of two or three billion would spend his last vital drop to sustain his self-importance. — Annie Dillard

She was one of the few stay-at-home moms in Ramsey Hill and was famously averse to speaking well of herself or ill of anybody else. She said that she expected to be "beheaded" someday by one of the windows whose sash chains she'd replaced. Her children were "probably" dying of trichinosis from pork she'd undercooked. She wondered if her "addiction" to paint-stripper fumes might be related to her "never" reading books anymore. She confided that she'd been "forbidden" to fertilize Walter's flowers after what had happened "last time. — Jonathan Franzen

I'm fine.My father's an arse, and my mum is dying and-oh my God,I'm so pissed." St. Clair looked at me again. His eyes were glassy like black marbles. "Pissed.Pissed.Pissed."
"We know you're pissed at your dad," I said. "It's okay. You're right, he's a jerk." I mean what was I supposed to say? He just found out his mother has cancer.
"Pissed is British for 'drunk,'" Mer said.
"Oh," I said. "Well. You're definitely that, too."
Meanwhile,The Couple was fighting. "Where have you been?" Rashmi asked. "You said you'd be home three hours ago!"
Josh rolled his eyes. "Out.We've been out. Someone had to help him-"
"And you call that helping? He's completely wasted. Catatonic. And you! God,you smell like car exhaust and armpits-"
"He couldn't drink alone."
"You were supposed to be watching out for him! What if something happened?"
"Beer. Liquor. Thatsswhat happened. Don't be such a prude,Rash. — Stephanie Perkins

Dying in unfamiliar surroundings miles away from home, it cannot possibly be good. There is a great sadness about that I think. — Ian McEwan