Fatal Accident Quotes & Sayings

We have a bad habit of seeing books as sort of cheaply made movies where the words do nothing but create visual narratives in our heads.
So too often what passes for literary criticism is "I couldn't picture that guy", or "I liked that part", or "this part shouldn't have happened." That is, we've left language so far behind that sometimes we judge quality solely based on a story's actions.
So we can appreciate a novel that constructs its conflicts primarily through plot - the layered ambiguity of a fatal car accident caused by a vehicle owned by Gatsby but driven by someone else, for instance. But in this image-drenched world, sometimes we struggle to appreciate and celebrate books where the quality arises not exclusively from plot but also from the language itself. — John Green

Some friends of theirs had rented their house for several months to an interior decorator. When they returned, they discovered that their entire library had been reorganized by color and size. Shortly thereafter, the decorator met with a fatal automobile accident. I confess that when this story was told, everyone around the dinner table concurred that justice had been served. — Anne Fadiman

We don't have real control over death. You could die of a heart attack, a building could fall on you, you could be in an accident, you could have a fatal disease. So, how should you conduct your life? You just go ahead and live, taking reasonable precautions - like handling the mail more carefully. — Rudy Giuliani

Along with every other male of his acquaintance he loathed the Naked Chef with messianic passion and prayed for the day he suffered a fatal accident on his scooter or burst into flames with the friction of sliding down that nauseating banister. Mark hated to think how rich he must be. And the fact that a mere bloody cook was taking up space in The Times that could be filled by a train journalist. Like himself, for example. Bastard. — Wendy Holden

How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, and they are free to rest and enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one's power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly. — George Gissing

What the hell was it that people loved so much about the great outdoors? It was just one fatal accident after another waiting to happen. — Josh Lanyon

Besides alligators, the only animals to be feared are the poisonous serpents. These are certainly common enough in the forest, but no fatal accident happened during the whole time of my residence. — Henry Walter Bates

And since a more convincing argument could not be found - aside from a fatal accident or suicide - this way was chosen: a process of galloping senescence. — Mircea Eliade

To the family of a victim of a fatal accident, the deceased was at the wrong place at the wrong time. To the family of the morgue owner, the deceased was at the right place at the right time. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Of course, accidents will happen in wild-folk families just as among us humans, only in a wild-folk family, an accident is more apt to be fatal. — Samuel Scoville Jr.

The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive. — Jodi Picoult

A man of adequate vitality and zest will surmount all misfortunes by the emergence after each blow of an interest in life and the world which cannot be narrowed down so much as to make one loss fatal. To be defeated by one loss or even by several is not something to be admired as a proof of sensibility, but something to be deplored as a failure in vitality. All our affections are at the mercy of death, which may strike down those whom we love at any moment. It is therefore necessary that our lives should not have that narrow intensity which puts the whole meaning and purpose of our life at the mercy of accident. — Betrand Russell

greater good in this story - God sparing Joe from a fatal accident. But Joe has to depend on faith. If you realize that God is operating from the vantage point of eternity, and that His Plan for you concerns your life in the next world as well as this one, then you will be more attuned to Him. Then your humility — Mother Angelica

But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. — Michael Crichton

Hello,Dad."
"Well,well,well, so you're still alive." The booming, full-bodied voice was not so subtly laced with sarcasm. "Your mother and I thought you'd met with some fatal accident."
Alan managed to keep the grin out of his voice. "I nicked myself shaving last week.How are you?"
"He asks how I am!" Daniel heaved a sigh that should have been patended for long-suffering fathers everywhere. "I wonder you even remember who I am. But that's all right-it doesn't matter about me.Your mother, now, she's been expecting her son to call. Her firstborn."
Alan leaned back.How often had he cursed fate for making him the eldest and giving his father that neat little phrase to needle him with? Of course, he remembered philosophically, Daniel had phrases for Rena and Caine as well-the only daughter,the youngest son.It was all relative. — Nora Roberts

Hotel Waldhaus
We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even ruined Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them. — Thomas Bernhard

'Boldface' is a pilot term, a magic word to describe the procedures that could, in a crisis, save your life. We say that 'boldface is written in blood' because often it's created in response to an accident investigation. It highlights the series of steps that should have been taken to avoid a fatal crash, but weren't. — Chris Hadfield

The engineer and historian of engineering Henry Petroski presents a very elegant point. Had the Titanic not had that famous accident, as fatal as it was, we would have kept building larger and larger ocean liners and the next disaster would have been even more tragic. So the people who perished were sacrificed for the greater good; they unarguably saved more lives than were lost. The story of the Titanic illustrates the difference between gains for the system and harm to some of its individual parts. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The more we reflect on this state, the more convinced we shall be that it was the least subject of any to revolutions, the best for man, and that nothing could have drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have happened. The example of the savages, most of whom have been found in this condition, seems to confirm that mankind was formed ever to remain in it, that this condition is the real youth of the world, and that all ulterior improvements have been so many steps, in appearance towards the perfection of individuals, but in fact towards — Steven Pinker

Because it flew without a pilot, the D-21 was designed to fly over territory where the U.S. was denied access and to take photographs of weapons facilities from altitudes as low as 1,500 feet. But the project was canceled on July 30, 1966, after a fatal accident at sea during the drone's first official launch. — Annie Jacobsen