Not My Time To Die Quotes & Sayings

I told my daughter, the first time she fell in love, not to hold it too close. Think of yourself in a warm, summer pool, I told her, concentric circles rippling all around you. Golden beams of sunlight flooding your hair, striking your face. Inhale it. Breathe it. It will not leave you. If you place sunlight in your palms, it will turn to shadow. If you put fireflies in a jar, they will die. But if you love with wings on, you will always feel the exhilaration of being suspended in flight. — Alyson Richman

There is a whole generation of young people just like us wandering around Europe and the rest of the world, trying to find some meaning for why they are alive and what they should choose to do with their time. When Martha leaves and we sit in front of the fire in the living room, I look to Lily until she turns to me and I can see the grief that hides just under the surface of her expression. We are, or at least were, two of those lost souls: wanderers, backpackers, season workers, Wwoofers, Workawayers, travellers: searching the world for something or someplace to hold on to. And we have come home not because we have retired from trying to find answers and are ready to settle into adulthood, but because my death has come upon us fast and unexpected. I am not the first person of this generation of travellers- or any person who lives in this godless, superficial society- to die. But I think that it feels to Lily and to me, my mother too perhaps, that I may very well be. — Annie Fisher

You always go for the ones who don't really want you - she really wanted Adam Moorad, she had just been rejected coldly and subterraneanly by Julien - she was interested in thin ascetic strange intellectuals of San Francisco and Berkeley and not in big paranoiac bums of ships and railroads and novels and all that hatefulness which in myself is to myself so evident and so to others too - though and because ten years younger than I seeing none of my virtues which anyway had long been drowned under years of drugtaking and desiring to die, to give up, to give it all up and forget it all, to die in the dark star - it was I stuck out my hand, not she - ah time. — Jack Kerouac

If you're going to die, die interesting! Is there anything worse than a boring death? (Other than a Charlie Rose marathon on PBS?) I think not. When my time comes I'm going to go out in high style. I have no intention of being sick or lingering or dragging on and on and boring everyone I know. — Joan Rivers

I envy Johnny and at the same time I get sore as hell watching him destroy himself, misusing his gifts, and the stupid accumulation of nonsense the pressure of his life requires. I think that if Johnny could straighten out his life, not even sacrificing heroin, if he could pilot that plane better, maybe he'd end up worse, maybe go crazy altogether, or die, but not without having played it to the depth, what he's looking for in those sad a posteriori monlogues, in his retelling of great, fascinating experiences which, however, stop right there, in the middle of the road. And all this I back up with my own cowardice, and maybe basically I want Johnny to wind up all at once like a nova that explodes into a thousand pieces and turns astronomers into idiots for a whole week, and then one can go off to sleep and tomorrow is another day. — Julio Cortazar

JAMIE'S SONG 'ZERO GRAVITY':

Sometimes I feel like I'm losing my mind.
I can't fight, I can't hide, and I can't tell the time.
I walk and I talk and I scream and I cry,
I pull at my hair and I crawl up to die.

When you're not around,
It feels like there's nothing holding me to the ground.
Suspended in no air with no light and no sound.
Floating and drifting, up and around.
I can't move, I can't breathe, I can't hear, I can't see.
Stuck on a planet with zero gravity. — Neha Yazmin

I've met men I would trust in the mouth of hell. Byrne or Douglas. I would trust them to breathe for me, to pump my blood with their hearts."
"Did you love them best? Would they be the ones you'd choose?"
"To die with? No. The one time I've felt what you describe was with a woman."
"A lover, you mean?" said Jack. "Not your own flesh and blood?"
"I think she was my own flesh and blood. I truly believe she was. — Sebastian Faulks

Nobody understands that by the time the addiction has set in the alcoholic is mandated to drink ... he cannot not drink! Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, 'Jiminy Cricket, I feel sensational! My life is really in great shape! I think I'll become an alcoholic!' I firmly believe that when a shaking-to-pieces alcoholic says he needs a drink or he will die, he means it. — Mercedes McCambridge

It was the first time in my life that I had been aware of my own existence. It was the first time in my life I had realized that I was alive. And if I was alive, then I could die, and I mean forever. Forever dead. Not heaven, not eternal life on some other plane ... just darkness, curtain, scene. Permanently. And that was the key to my new religion, I figured. That's why life was so fucking great. I want that day back. I want to be nine again and be told, Nomi: someday you'll be gone, you'll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There's no other place to be. This world is good enough for you because it has to be. Go ahead and love it. — Miriam Toews

Here we are told that Christ really lives in me, if I have accepted Christ as my Savior. In other words, we have the words of Jesus to the thief of the cross, 'Today thou wilt be with me in paradise.' Christ can say, 'Today thou wilt be with me in paradise,' and mean it. To die is to be with the Lord. It is not just an idea, it is a reality. But at the same time, Christ, the same Christ who gives the promise just as definitely, that when I have accepted Christ as my savior, he lives in me. — Francis Schaeffer

All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. II find most people spend too much time living as if they're never going to die. — Edward Albee

I think everything is going to be devastatingly sad - when the phone rings, I know somebody in my family's been hurt, somebody's going to die. I'm sure a therapist would go, 'That's not a good way to live,' but every time it's not that bad thing, I'm so thankful and appreciative. — Sandra Bullock

It has been seven years since you died. Of course what I'll say next is that time has flown by. I got old. All of a sudden, de repente. I walk with difficulty. I even drool. I leave the door unlocked in case I die in my sleep, but it's more likely I'll go endlessly on until I get put away someplace. I am already dotty.... It's not so strange that I talk to my cat but I feel silly because he is totally deaf. — Lucia Berlin

I'll have plenty of time to rest when I die, but this eventuality is not yet part of my plans. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Jesus, it's the beloved day we call Christmas Eve, the date we've set aside to remember and reflect upon your nativity. Luke took so much care to fix your birthday in the context of real history and a real world, but whether or not you were born anywhere close to December 25 is not important at all. That you were born - that you actually came from eternity into time and space - that's what's important, Jesus. I sing to you today with all the passion and delight I can possibly muster, "Born that man (including me) no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth (including me), born to give them (including me) second birth." For the certainty of your birth, and therefore my rebirth, I give you great praise. — Scotty Smith

Making a Fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern
past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand. — Naomi Shihab Nye

Whenever I think about my stupid empty life, I come to the conclusion that I'm just wasting my time, and I'm not the only one. Everybody I know is the same, except for old Jiko. Just wasting time, killing time, feeling crappy.
And what does it mean to waste time anyway? If you waste time is it lost forever?
And if time is lost forever, what does that mean? It's not like you get to die any sooner, right? I mean, if you want to die sooner, you have to take matters into your own hands. — Ruth Ozeki

I have to go in with Raquel and fix this curse. Why don't you come in and . . . umm, lie down on the couch or something."
Reth gave me a humorless smile. "In all our time with each other, have I ever struck you as the type to nap on a couch?"
I snickered. "Not really. But it would be entertaining for me, at least. I'll bet you snore, even."
He looked indignant. "What makes you think I even sleep?"
"Do you?"
"Not in the same way you do. Go and waste your time trying to 'fix' Lend. I will try my best not to die waiting."
I took a step away, then turned back. "Wait, seriously? Are you going to die?"
He smiled, this time a genuine one. "I knew you cared. Not at the moment, but I will need you for something very soon. — Kiersten White

Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death. — Genghis Khan

And lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin. Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if'n he's in the way. If'n you'd a-got kilt, it'd mean you jest didn't move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog. You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?" I shook my head. "I don't neither. When it comes to prayin', we got it all over the other animals, but we ain't no different when it comes to livin' and dyin'. If'n you give God the credit when somebody don't die, you go'n blame Him when they do die? Call it His will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don't die but once't? Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if'n we can. Hit ain't never His will for us to die - cept in the big sense. In the sense He was smart enough not to make life eternal on this here earth, with people — Olive Ann Burns

But I know nothing of time. I am new every day. I am born when I wake up in the morning, I grow old during the day, and I die at night when I go to sleep. It is not my fault. And I am doing so well today. I am doing so much better than I have ever done before. — Paul Auster

In other languages,
you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wish
I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean
were sitting in that chair playing cards
and noticing how famous you are
on my cell phone- picture of your eyes
guarding your nose and the fire
you set by walking, picture of dawn
getting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hate
about stars is they're not those candles
that make a joke of cake, that you blow on
and they die and come back, and you
you're not those candles either, how often I realize
I'm not breathing, to be like you
or just afraid to move at all, a lung
or finger, is it time already
for inventory, a mountain, I have three
of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you
were a cigarette I'd be cancer, if you
were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far
as this tree can say. — Bob Hicok

The long ghosts are walking the halls. When my mother died I felt expanded, slowly, durably, over time. I felt suffused with her truth, spread through, as with water, color or light. I thought she'd entered the deepest place I could provide, the animating entity, the thing, if anything, that will survive my own last breath, and she makes me larger, she amplifies my sense of what it is to be human. She is part of
me now, total and consoling. And it is not a sadness to acknowledge that she had to die before I could know her fully. It is only a statement of the power of what comes after. — Don DeLillo

I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it's just my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. [...] What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. [...] Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it's you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It's when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. — Toni Morrison

Your edict, King, was strong,
But all your strength is weakness itself against
The immortal unrecorded laws of God.
They are not merely now: they were, and shall be,
Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.
I knew I must die, even without your decree:
I am only mortal. And if I must die
Now, before it is my time to die,
Surely this is no hardship: can anyone
Living, as I live, with evil all about me,
Think Death less than a friend? — Sophocles

I grabbed the lapels of his coat, tears filling my eyes. "Don't tell me this is all happening for a reason ... Or that it's going to be okay. Don't tell me you're ready to die." ...
He met my gave, his blue eyes steady, "It's not going to be okay." He brushed hair back from my cheeks and cupped my face in his rough hands. "None of this is happening for a reason." He skimmed his lips over mine. "And Saints help me, Alina, I want to live forever."
He kissed me again, and this time, he didn't stop — Leigh Bardugo

I love you too. I want nothing more than to take your hand and walk you to the other side, but baby, it's not your time. I didn't put my life on the line and die just so you could throw your life away. — Danielle Jamie

Because when the legends get written, I didn't want to be remembered for standing on the sidelines. I want my future offspring to know that I was there, and that I fought against her at the end, even if I couldn't do anything useful." I blinked, this time not at the brightness of the sun. "Because," he went on, his eyes locked with mine, "I didn't want you to fight alone. Or die alone. — Sarah J. Maas

Fair warning: You might get stared at," Zoe says as we walk through the security scanner. There are more people in the hallways up ahead now than there were earlier--it must be time for them to start work. "Your face is a familiar one here. People in the Bureau watch the screens often, and for the past few months, you've been involved in a lot of interesting things. A lot of the younger people think you're downright heroic."
"Oh, good," I say, a sour taste in my mouth. "Heroism is what I was focused on. Not, you know, trying not to die."
Zoe stops. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make light of what you've been through. — Veronica Roth

When we first started out I had a really big issue and a lot of my loved ones had a really big issue with the fact that I was totally in pain up there and there was a time when I tried to hurt myself off stage, but I got over that. Like, you should never want to hurt yourself. You should love yourself. Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself and become a new person and I think that that is going to be a lot of what the next record is about, not to plug it or anything. Like, it's going to talk about dying and coming back to become what you totally want to become. We are all becoming what we want to become. — Gerard Way

I was created, then the Society ordered the destruction of all mods. The day after I was born, the date of my death was set! So I sweated in that pill, just waiting to die. Day after day, my brothers and sisters were killed. Then I got lucky and got shipped out with a load of goods by mistake. Still, I always expected to be discovered and destroyed. I had a lot of time to think about things. I decided no one has the right to take a life. I exist! I should have the right to live and die freely!! Like humans, or even bugs. Even a mod should have that right. So I refuse to take a life. I won't kill ... not anything! — Tite Kubo

Really, all we managed to do was to ride fast and not all die, but that itself felt as rewarding as routing the enemy, considering how quickly that trap closed around us. Despite my throbbing tongue, sweat pouring double time from every pore, and my heart racing faster than any horse's, I couldn't suppress a huge smile. Survival was the greatest prize of all. I wanted to yell, to cry, to drink, and yes, to whoop, loudly, maniacally. We'd lost men, we'd been bloodied and injured, but no matter what, we survived. And that felt as sweet and wonderful as anything I could imagine. I — Jeff Salyards

Dr. Y. Hiraiwa, professor of Hiroshima University of Literature and Science, and one of my church members, was buried by the bomb under the two storied house with his son, a student of Tokyo University. Both of them could not move an inch under tremendously heavy pressure. And the house already caught fire. His son said, 'Father, we can do nothing except make our mind up to consecrate our lives for the country. Let us give Banzai to our Emperor.' Then the father followed after his son, 'Tenno-heika, Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!' . . . In thinking of their experience of that time Dr. Hiraiwa repeated, 'What a fortunate that we are Japanese! It was my first time I ever tasted such a beautiful spirit when I decided to die for our Emperor. — John Hersey

Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. And if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go further, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live forevermore believing as those that deny Him. — George MacDonald

My name is Herbert Badgery. I am a hundred and thirty-nine years old and something of a celebrity. They come and look at me and wonder how I do it. There are weeks when I wonder the same, whole stretches of terrible time. It is hard to believe you can feel so bad and still not die. — Peter Carey

Can you make it past me, thief-catcher?" Mat called, careful not to take his eyes off the man waiting for him with blade poised to strike. Sandar had insisted irritably on "thief-catcher," not "thief-taker," though Mat could not see any difference.
"I cannot," Sandar called from behind him. "If you move to let me by, you will lose room to swing that oar you call a staff, and he will spit you like a grunt."
Like a what? "Well, think of something, Tairen. This ragamuffin is grating my nerves."
The man in the gold-striped coat sneered. "You will be honored to die on the blade of the High Lord Darlin, peasant, if I allow it so." It was the first time he had deigned to speak. "Instead, I think I will have the pair of you hung by the heels, and watch while the skin is stripped from your bodies - "
"I do not think I'd like that," Mat said. — Robert Jordan

Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace. — Salman Rushdie

We're all watching him. It's the one thing we can really do, and it is not for nothing: if he were to falter, fail, or die, what would become of us? No wonder he's like a boot, hard on the outside, giving shape to a pulp of tenderfoot. That's just a wish. I've been watching him for some time and he's given no evidence, of softness.
But watch out, Commander, I tell him in my head. I've got my eye on you. One false move and I'm dead.
Still, it must be hell, to be a man, like that.
It must be just fine.
It must be hell.
It must be very silent. — Margaret Atwood

If this were a fairy tale, this would be the part where the fishboy appears and Diana shoots him through the heart. Because he is a tragic hero, he's our fucking Gatsby, and he lived for his fish and he has to die for his fish. He would never let my fake authority, condoning his abandonment, making up rules about what's okay just to save his life, convince him to give up his family. He would never leave.
He would know that without him, none of us will be as good. Me, without a friend; and the fish, without a brother; and the island, without a story; and Diana, without her something real, we will all be a little bit less than we were before we knew him.
So he wouldn't leave. Not until I could come with him. And I have never been less able to leave than I am now.
But this isn't a fairy tale, and he doesn't appear. We stand here for a long time.
He really left.
Because it was all that we could do. — Hannah Moskowitz

If I get even five per cent of my ideas out and documented before I die, I'll be lucky. I'm not in danger of running out of riffs or ideas anytime soon. They overwhelm me and it's hard to find time to deal with them. — Jello Biafra

Yes. Kissing. Overrated."
"I could change your mind," Zach said, surprising the hell out of them both. Why would he take something as simple as this banter as a challenge? "I don't know that I want to, but I feel right sure I could."
"How arrogant. How typically male."
"I suppose." He shrugged and reached for the wine bottle. "More?"
She nodded, frowning now. "How do you know you could change my mind? It's been a long time since you ... well - "
"Over two years." The pain was there, an ache in his chest he imagined he would feel every time he thought of Hannah.
And he thought of her every day. Dreamed of her about as often. But lately, maybe only in the past week, he'd begun to realize that his life had not ended with his wife's.
He either had to die or start living again. — Tracy Sumner

Please don't take him away from this world. Please don't let him die here in my arms, not after everything we've been through together, not after You've taken so many others. Please, I beg You, let him live. I am willing to sacrifice anything to make this happen- I'm willing to do anything You ask. Maybe you'll laugh at me for such a naive promise, but I mean it in earnest, and I don't care if it makes no sense or seems impossible. Let him live. Please. I can't bear this a second time.
Tell me there is still good in this world. Tell me there is still hope for all of us. — Marie Lu

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we are all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quietly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone Else's words ... I was going to die, if not sooner then later whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. — Audre Lorde

I won't lie. Looking back is difficult - my memories are tinged with hollowness and shame. Still, I wasn't suicidal. I mean, sure. This last time, I did drink the poison - and maybe this sounds weird, but it just never occurred to me that I would really die from it. And I didn't. Not technically. But psychiatry, like alchemy, is a very inexact science. You'd think psychiatrists of all people would have a sense of humor about an occasional lapse in judgment like taking a few drops of poison. They don't. (Having just reread this note, I'm fairly certain the words are not exactly coming out the — W.C. Anderson

My fondest wish, I suppose, would be to die at the keyboard right after finishing a book, perhaps with a little time off to have some really good sex. It's not, 'Oh, thank God, this is book No. 250. I can die now.' — Nora Roberts

I will not die for a long time." Joseph tugged at his gray beard. "My beard goes white, but there's a lot of life in me yet."
"Don't be so sure, Abba," Joshua said.
Joseph dropped the bowl he was working on and stared into his hands. "Run away and play, you two," he said, his voice little more than a whisper.
Joshua stood and walked away. I wanted to throw my arms around the old man, for I had never seen a grown man afraid before and it frightened me too. "Can I help?" I said, pointing to the half-finished bowl that lay in Joseph's lap.
"You go with Joshua. He needs a friend to teach him to be human. Then I can teach him to be a man. — Christopher Moore

I'm not Sisyphus trying to restrain death. Illyria is a soldier. If it's her time, it's her time. I'm not at war with Atropos. It's her will to take us whenever she likes. My only goal is to die with dignity. (Stryker) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It's idiotic, it's crazy. If you die and then you're just nothing, there isn't any point to anything. Why do we live at all if we die and stop being? Father wasn't ready to be stopped. No one's ready to be stopped. We don't have *time* to be ready to be stopped. It's all crazy.
... Look at my glasses. I can't even see that there are any stars in the sky without them, but it's not the glasses that are doing the seeing, it's me, Madeleine. I don't think Father's eyes are seeing now, but *he* is. And maybe his brain isn't thinking, but a brain's just something to think through, the way my glasses are something to see through. — Madeleine L'Engle

Frodo: 'It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.'
Gandalf: 'Pity? It's a pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.' Frodo: 'I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.'
Gandalf: 'So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I almost let him die. I did. I'm not proud of that now. It was a mistake. But when all you can think of is revenge, you don't think straight. I haven't for a long time. I've plotted and manipulated and stolen to get what I want, and it's cost me everything. When I lost my mother, I lost a bit of myself to the hatred. It clouded my judgment. I couldn't think straight anymore, and I lost both my father and brother because of it. I lost the love of my life. I lost the respect of my fellow Bloods. I lost control over you. By using deception to get my revenge, I lost everything, Kara. I lost everything that ever used to matter to me. - Blood Gavin — S.M. Boyce

This will happen again," Nathaniel explained. "Even if we manage not to hurt each other, eventually one of us will get sick or get bored, or someone else will get in the way. Maybe they won't mean to. Maybe my mom will need me when she's older and I'll have to go to her - "
"I'd go with you," Kelly offered.
" - or maybe one of us will die young or maybe you'll fall out of love with me because emotions can't be controlled. Or maybe we'll get to a point where we want to hurt each other. I know that's hard to imagine now, but relationships only get more complicated as time goes by."
"So we better avoid them?" Kelly snapped. "Why do you even leave the house? Why aren't you constantly scared of getting hit by a car or shot by some random lunatic?"
Nathaniel exhaled." I never was before. Not until I fell in love with you. — Jay Bell

I am a plant, she said, I need fire, earth, water. Otherwise I will be stunted. And: Is marriage not such a stunting? The fire goes out. The wind grows weak. The earth dries out. The water dwindles. I would die. You too. She tossed her hair over her shoulders. Purple lavender. And what if it wasn't like that, I argued. What if the daily routine, our daily routine, is my promise to you? Your toothbrush next to mine. You get annoyed because I've forgotten to turn the light off in the bathroom. We choose wallpaper we think is horrible a year later. You tell me I'm getting a belly. Your forgetfulness. You've left your umbrella somewhere again. I snore, you can't sleep. In my dream I whisper your name...You tie my tie. Wave goodbye to me as I go to work. I think: you are like a fluttering flag. I think it with a stabbing pain in my heart. For Heaven's sake, is that not enough? Is that not enough to be happy? She turned away: Give me time. I'll think about it. — Milena Michiko Flasar

I tell you, you Heaven's Holy Baal, you don't exist; but that, if you did, I would curse you so that your Heaven would quiver with the fire of hell! I tell you, I have offered you my service, and you repulsed me; and I turn my back on you for all eternity, because you did not know your time of visitation! I tell you that I am about to die, and yet I mock you! You Heaven God and Apis! with death staring me in the face - I tell you, I would rather be a bondsman in hell than a freedman in your mansions! I tell you, I am filled with a blissful contempt for your divine paltriness; and I choose the abyss of destruction for a perpetual resort, where the devils Judas and Pharaoh are cast down! — Knut Hamsun

Thursday, you mean everything to me. Not just because you're cute, smart, funny and have a devastatingly good figure and boobs to die for, but that you do right for right's sake - it's what you are and what you do. Even if I never get my magnum opus published, I will still die secure in the knowledge that my time on this planet was well-spent - giving support, love and security to someone who actually makes a difference. — Jasper Fforde

I felt suddenly that 'this sort of thing' would kill me. The definition of the cause was vague, but the thought itself was no mere morbid artificiality of sentiment but a genuine conviction. 'That sort of thing' was what I would have to die from. It wouldn't be from the innumerable doubts. Any sort of certitude would be also deadly. It wouldn't be from a stab - a kiss would kill me as surely. It would not be from a frown or from any particular word or any particular act - but from having to bear them all, together and in succession - from having to live with 'that sort of thing.' About the time I finished with my neck-tie I had done with life too. — Joseph Conrad

He was the first important person in my life to die, and when he did, it was the first time I realized that life is not fair or safe or even ours to own. I miss him. — Amy Poehler

I went to a foot specialist recently and she said:
"You've broken a bone, it's healed funny."
"What can you do?"
"Not much."
She strapped me up though and that's the reason my foot is hurting, because the strapping gave me cramp.
When I'm about to die I'm going to head ti a swamp so I topple in when the time comes. In 50,000 years when they dig me up, pretty well preserved, the scientists will have to work out what sort of life I led from my bone structure, teeth and whatnot. Maybe I'll be clutching a Felt record or something to give them a clue. They'll look at my foot and say: "This man broke a bone and it's healed funny." And they'll look at the Felt record, analysing the grooves with a Groove Analyser and they'll say: "He was obviously in an indie band and one day the pressure got too much, and he booted a wall." And they wouldn't be far from the truth, those crazy scientists. — Stuart Murdoch

As I took Allison to the airport for her flight into San Francisco and the rest of her life, I thought about how lucky her father and I were to have had her in our lives. My time with her was over, though I was sure we would stay in touch. I kept thinking I should be sad, but I felt content more than anything. Now, I'm not saying I won't want to call her every day, and she'll probably die without me, but why ruin something so perfect trying to stay together? — Rob Thomas

When I was a boy, I went to war searching for glory. I didn't find it.
I came here, thinking I'd find glory if I built a ranching empire or a thriving town.
Instead I discovered that I didn't even know what glory was, not until you smiled at me for the first time with no fear in your eyes ...
A hundred years from now, everything I've worked so hard to build will be nothing more than dust blowing in the wind, but if I can spend my life loving you, I'll die a wealthy man, a contented man.
-Dallas to Dee — Lorraine Heath

When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it, what will it be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then - that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world. Do they not teach you this? — C.S. Lewis

My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air;
no bird here can sing as well
as the birds sing over there.

We have fields more full of flowers
and a starrier sky above,
we have woods more full of life
and a life more full of love.

Lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
my homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Such delights as my land offers
Are not found here nor elsewhere;
lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Don't allow me, God, to die
without getting back to where
I belong, without enjoying
the delights found only there,
without seeing all those palm-trees,
hearing thrush-songs fill the air. — Goncalves Dias

In life, there's a lot that I'm afraid of. Death is always scary. My sister passed away. I'm not scared to die, so much as I was scared to not have her in my life, and it took a long time for me to reconcile that. There are fears everyday, and things that I'm afraid of. I fear everything, but I keep going. — Geoff Johns

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

I seem to wish to have some importance
In the play of time. If not,
Then sad was my mother's pain, my breath, my bones,
My web of nerves, my wondering brain,
to be shaped and quickened with such anticipation
Only to feed the swamp of space.
What is deep, as love is deep, I'll have
Deeply. What is good, as love is good,
I'll have well. Then if time and space
Have any purpose, I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry, the least
I can do is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.
And so you see it might be better to die.
Though, on the other hand, I admit it might
Be immensely foolish. — Christopher Fry

So this," she said, "what's happening and what's going to happen, this isn't your fault. You can't control everything and not everything is your responsibility. At Croke Park you said something about how you don't want to drag me around after you so I can die beside you. I wanted to tell you then, but I didn't have the words and I didn't have the time. I'm here because I choose to be. You save my life. I save yours. That's how we work."
"Until the end."
"Until the end. — Derek Landy

Are you from Hapsburg?"
He seemed to think about it for a second or two, then gave a small nod.
"I thought I recognized the accent."
The scowl was back full force. "You are an expert on accents?" He managed to sound sarcastic.
"No. My Uncle Otto was from Hapsburg."
He blinked again, and the scowl wilted around the edges. "You are not German." He sounded very sure.
"My father's family is; from Baden-Baden on the edge of the Black Forest but Uncle Otto was from Hamburg.
"You said only your uncle had the accent."
"By the time I came along, most of the family, except for my grandmother, had been in this country so long there was no accent, but Uncle Otto never lost his."
"He's dead now." Olaf made it half question, half statement.
I nodded.
"How did he die?"
"Grandma Blake says Aunt Gertrude nagged him to death."
His lips twitched. "Women are tyrants if a man allows it." His voice was a touch softer now. — Laurell K. Hamilton

You want to know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid of every morning when I wake up that this will be the day when I can no longer move for myself. I know it's coming. It's just a matter of time until I have no choice, except to have someone else clothe me, feed me. Change my diaper. And I can't stand it. (Adron)
Then why don't you kill yourself? Why are you still here? (Livia)
Because every time I think of doing that, I can hear my family praying over me while I was in the hospital. I hear my mother weeping, my father begging me not to die on them. I could never intentionally hurt them that way. It would devastate them both, and while I'm a pathetic asshole, I'm not that selfish. (Adron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too. — Elizabeth I

I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had. It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon. It's not that I wouldn't and will not it's that it is too soon too soon too soon. — William Faulkner

I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad. — William Golding

And how is my daughter, Ezinma?" "She has been very well for some time now. Perhaps she has come to stay." "I think she has. How old is she now?" "She is about ten years old." "I think she will stay. They usually stay if they do not die before the age of six." "I pray she stays," said Ekwefi with a heavy sigh. The — Chinua Achebe

I drink because I don't stand a chance and I know it. I couldn't drive a truck and I couldn't get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can't handle ... I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don't happen to be a hard-working man. I never wanted a family ... Yes, your mother works hard. I love my wife and I love my children. But shouldn't a man have a better life? Maybe someday it will be that the Unions will arrange for a man to work and to have time for himself too. But that won't be in my time. Now, it's work hard all the time or be a bum ... no in-between. When I die, nobody will remember me for long. No one will say, "He was a man who loved his family and believed in the Union." All they will say is," Too bad. But he was nothing but a drunk no matter which way you look at it." Yes they'll say that. — Betty Smith

We will die soon; and still our "hope is from him." May we not expect that when we face illness He will send angels to carry us to His bosom? We believe that when the pulse is faint and the heart is weak, some angelic messenger shall stand and look with loving eyes upon us and whisper, "Come away!" As we approach the heavenly gate, we expect to hear the welcome invitation, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."1 We are expecting harps of gold and crowns of glory; we are hoping soon to be among the company of shining ones before the throne; we are looking forward and longing for the time when we shall be like our glorious Lord - for "We shall see him as he is."2 Then if these are your hopes, O my soul, live for God; live with the desire and resolve to glorify Him from whose grace in your election, redemption, and calling you safely "hope" for the coming glory. — Anonymous

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

For me, the good death includes being prepared to die, with my affairs in order, the good and bad messages delivered that need delivering. The good death means dying while I still have my mind sharp and aware; it also means dying without having to endure large amounts of suffering and pain. The good death means accepting death as inevitable, and not fighting it when the time comes. This is my good death, but as legendary psychotherapist Carl Jung said, "It won't help to hear what I think about death." Your relationship to mortality is your own. — Caitlin Doughty

Tis not your time, my love," he whispered. "You will not die tonight."
"Never," I said to him, "for I have been blessed by Death's Eternal Kiss. — Charlotte Featherstone

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

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of 'Gone With the Wind', and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It's actually one of the things that you live and die for. — Neil Gaiman

I do not desire to die soon, because in Heaven there is no suffering. I desire to live a long time because I yearn to suffer much for the love of my Spouse. — Magdalena De Pazzi

It was the most monotonous day of my life," he replied without a second's hesitation. Then his rigid face broke and re-formed itself into the best smile ever, so that for a moment he really did look as if he had slipped through the bars of whatever confined him. "As a matter of fact, I thought you quite excellent," he said. This time she did not object to his choice of adjective. "Will you crash the car now, please, Jose? This will do me fine. I'll die here." And before he could stop her, she had grabbed his hand and kissed him hard on the knuckle of his thumb. — John Le Carre

Everyone warned me against continuing my investigation,"Gobi continued. "They said the people I was going up against were too powerful. I did not care. They said I would die. Again, I did not care. I knew that my life would mean nothing if I did not come back to avenge my sister's honor. But by the time I was able to pinpoint who had taken her here, it was too late. She had died."
I tried to say something, but my throat was too dry. For a second I couldn't even swallow. My chest felt so tight that it ached, and I thought if I didn't say something, or at least try to, I was going to explode. — Joe Schreiber

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

Tell me that you're happy with your life that you don't crave my touch, my kisses, the way I used to whisper in your ear. Tell me that when you see me, your heart doesn't race, that butterflies don't flutter in your stomach, that the moment you see me, your world isn't right. Because every time I see you, everything is right in my world. I crave you, I need you, and I'll die proving to you that I'm a man that deserves you. When things went to hell for me, you were the only thing that kept me alive. Your memory kept me sane and has driven me to become a man. This time, Julia, I'm not letting you walk away and I'll fight for us. Even if I have to fight for the both of us, I'll fight till my dying breath to show you I deserve you. — M.L. Rodriguez

I have lost years that I will never get back. Only now am I just beginning to live, on the verge of old age. It is painful and unfair. But today I have a different attitude to life: it can't be constructed from superficial things, no matter how attractive they may appear. Neither wealth not appearances have any importance now.
Pain gave me new life. It took a long time for me to die as Malika, General Oufkir's eldest daughter, the child of a powerful figure, of a past. I've gained an identity. My own identity. And that is priceless.
If there had not been all that waste, all that horror ... I'd almost venture to say that my suffering made me grow. In any case, it changed me. for the better. It's as well to make the best of things. — Malika Oufkir

Most of the time, I do not want to die. But I would like to have the means of death within my grasp. I want to feel the luxury of choice, to know the answer to "How do I bear this?" need not always be "Endure. — Anna Lyndsey

The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing. — Jacques Derrida

I love you, Olivia," he whispered, and my heart ached as if it would break in half. "You think we'll die if we stay together, but I've been dying slowly for the last six years. I'm taking my life back, Liv. Our life together. And this time, I'm not going to let you go. — Rachel Vincent

On one hand, I knew that we should have headed back to the others. Taking time to get cozy with Glate wasn't the smartest of choices, especially given what had happened last time we tried to take advantage of what little free time we'd had with one another.
But on the other hand? Life was far too short to not give into temptation every now and again. We were all merely existing to die at one point or another. There would be no happily-ever-after for any of us. Life was what you made of it, and even if the world that I had found myself in had been complete and utter shit, I had decided that I would see to it that I lived out my last days happily. — Nicole Sobon

I was thirteen when I saw my mother die, when I told my story. When I started "having a hard time," as my grandfather likes to say. Would they have locked me up if I'd been thirty? If I'd been a boy? It's a question I do not dare to ask. — Ally Carter

My sense of urgency is very simple,' said the professor, 'I've remembered that much. It's because what I have to remember has to do with time running out. And that's what anxiety is, in a lot of people. They know they have to do something, they should be doing something else, not just living hand-to-mouth, putting paint on their faces and decorating their caves and playing nasty tricks on their rivals. No. They have to do something else before they die - and so the mental hospitals are full and the chemists flourishing. — Doris Lessing

He was muttering now and I could barely make out his words. "I'm going to die without ever feeling a woman's tits."
"Go ahead," I said. It was about time I used the power of my chichis for good and not for evil. — Marta Acosta

Durga wore a simple sea-green dress and a lei of lotus flowers ... "Take this," it has no special power except that the blooms will not fade, but it will serve a purpose on your voyage. I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die." She placed the lei over my neck. "Dig down and grow strong roots, my daughter, for you will stretch forth, break out of the waters and find peace on the calm surface at last. You will discover that if you hadn't stretched, you would have drowned in the deep, never to blossom or share your gift with others. — Colleen Houck

I've met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I'm not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months' time, I'll be far away and he'll be just a memory, but I couldn't stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit ...
Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meeting are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes directions. — Paulo Coelho

During my three seasons at Mount Rainier I learned a lot about mountain climbing and rescues, about politics and camaraderie in the mountains, and about what being a woman climber means. Now I know in all certainty when to bring my toothbrush and when to leave it at home, and, all things considered, that kind of confidence is hard to come by. The greatest skill I ever had, though, was the one I started with: being able to suffer for long periods of time and not die. In exchange, I got to see some amazing things. — Bree Loewen

My picture of the world is drawn in perspective and not like a model to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings and the stars are all as small as three-penny bits. I don't really believe in astronomy, except as a complicated description of part of the course of human and possibly animal sensation. I apply my perspective not merely to space but also to time. In time the world will cool and everything will die; but that is a long time off still and its present value at compound discount is almost nothing. — Frank P. Ramsey

Generations cometh and generations passeth, but the earth abideth forever. While successive generations live and die, and all things change, man can never rest until death claims us. I choose to use my time alone to contemplate human existence, probe the human condition, and trace what it means to be one man in our modern world. There can be no profit from my labor, no lasting yield realized from this laborious and painful sojourn. We will leave everything behind. The earth shall dissolve all of our acquisitions and obliterate all traces of our petty affections. Passage of time shall alter, not annihilate the products of any artistic labors. The substance of our artistic enterprises shall continue forward in a renewed and redefined state. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Most Wicked Words!-Forbear to Speak Them Out

Most wicked words!-forbear to speak them out.
Utter them not again; blaspheme no more
Against our love with maxims learned from Doubt:
Lest Death should get his foot inside the door.
We are surrounded by a hundred foes;
And he that at your bidding joins our feast,
I stake my heart upon it, is one of those,
Nor in their councils does he sit the least.
Hark not his whisper: he is Time's ally,
Kinsman to Death, and leman of Despair:
Believe that I shall love you till I die;
Believe; and thrust him forth; and arm the stair;
And top the walls with spikes and splintered glass
That he pass gutted should again he pass. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

On my seventh birthday, my father swore, for the first of many times, that I would die facedown in a cesspool. On that same occasion, my mother, with all the accompanying mystery and elevated language appropriate for a prominent diviner, turned her cards, screamed delicately, and proclaimed that my doom was written in water and blood and ice. As for me, from about that time and for twenty years since, I had spat on my middle finger and slapped the rump of every aingerou I noticed, murmuring the sincerest, devoutest prayer that I might prove my parents' predictions wrong. Not so much that I feared the doom itself - doom is just the hind end of living, after all - but to see the two who birthed me confounded. — Carol Berg

They stuffed the air between my clothes and me with ice-cubes from my neck to my ankles, and whenever the ice melted, they put in new, hard ice cubes. Moreover, every once in a while, one of the guards smashed me, most of the time in the face. The ice served both for the pain and for wiping out the bruises I had from that afternoon. Everything seemed to be perfectly prepared. People from cold regions might not understand the extent of the pain when ice-cubes get stuck on your body. Historically, kings during medieval and pre-medieval times used this method to let the victim slowly die. The other method, of hitting the victim while blindfolded in inconsistent intervals, was used by the Nazis during World War II. There is nothing more terrorizing than making somebody expect a smash every single heartbeat. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Even in a book of lies sometimes you find truth. There is indeed a season for all things and now that I see you flesh-to-flesh and blood-to-blood I know I cannot raise my hand against you. But know this, you are my greatest disappointment. Does your master hear me? Atlas! You can kill me, but you will never have my city. My strength is not in steel and fire, that is what the parasites will never understand. A season for all things! A time to live and a time to die, a time to build ... and a time to destroy! — Andrew Ryan