Quotes & Sayings About Someone Dead

If every part of you is alive but inside someone else ... are you alive or are you dead? — Neal Shusterman

It's amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via an initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking. Is cutting the organs out of a dead man and stitching them into someone else barbaric and disrespectful, or is it a straightforward operation to save multiple lives? Does crapping into a Baggie while sitting 6 inches away from your crewmate represent a collapse of human dignity or a unique and comic form of intimacy? — Mary Roach

All thought usually reached the public after thirty years in some such form: The man on the street heard the conclusions of some dead genius through someone else's clever paradoxes and didactic epigrams. — F Scott Fitzgerald

How can you be a 'Former-Father'? Is it possible to be a father but, because someone or something is determined to illegalize it, being a father becomes a thing of the past? Should you simply consign yourself to be effectively dead to your living children; as though the fact of being their father has somehow been terminated, nullified or otherwise, deemed non-existent? I believe the basic answer to be 'No! — H. Kirk Rainer

When you come fact to face with love, and before the sun sets, you become someone you didn't used to be. It makes the old things new. Makes dead things live. Love makes you into something better. — Jonathan Hickman

I'd rather die while I'm living then live while I'm dead. — Jimmy Buffett

Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies,too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead? — Irvin D. Yalom

They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now before I popped off. — Doris Lessing

Dead flowers stood rotting in the massive Chinese vases and a shut-up heaviness overweighed the room: the air almost too stale to breathe, the exact, suffocating feel of our apartment when Mrs. Barbour took me back to Sutton Place to get some things I needed. It was a stillness I knew; this was a house closed in on itself when someone died. — Donna Tartt

We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them.
...
Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important. — Donna Leon

When someone is missing the really hard thing is that you never really do give up hope, even though the inquest says that she is dead, even though right from the beginning we already knew that we wouldn't see her again. — Jackie French

The day that I left my home, I had prayed that my children would forget me. I wanted to spare them the pain of remembering. But that night, as I crouched in the white mist, waiting, I knew more than anything that I wanted them to remember, I wanted desperately to go on living in someone's memory. If we are not remembered, we are more than dead, for it is as if we had never lived. — Karen Maitland

At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep. — Gregory David Roberts

I'm human," he said in a tormented tone. "And I'm not." He dropped his hand to her shoulder. "I never knew softness," he breathed. "Not until the moment you touched me in your store. My life is violent and dangerous. Its dark and twisted and no place for someone like you. I have more people wanting me dead than I can count. They will stop at nothing, and you.." He ground his teeth before he spoke again. "You'll never want again for anything in your life. I swear it on what little bit of human soul I have left. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Everybody around us was weeping. Someone began to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I don't know whether, during the history of the Jewish people, men have ever before recited Kaddish for themselves. — Elie Wiesel

Love is: Bringing a blanket when someone's asleep. Giving the last piece of food to the other person. Staying awake to listen to them when you are dead tired. Hugging them tightly when they need it the most. — Carlos Salinas

In the running of cities, virtually nothing is done by anyone that is conducive to political health, nor is there a single ally with whom one might go to the aid of justice and still remain alive; it would be a case of a solitary human among wild animals, neither wanting to join in their depredations nor able to stand alone against their collective savagery, dead before he'd done any good to his city or friends and useless both to himself and everybody else. Once a person has made all these calculations, he keeps his peace and minds his own business, like someone withdrawing from the prevailing wind into the shelter of a wall in a storm of dust or rain, and as he sees everyone else filling themselves full of lawlessness he is content if he himself can somehow live out life here untainted by injustice and impious actions, and leave it with fine hopes and in a spirit of kindness and good will. — Plato

A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead. — Andrew Sean Greer

I cast a look at where Rhys still remained sprawled on the cushions, watching us with raised brows. "For someone who was just dead," I said tightly, "you seem remarkably relaxed."

Rhys smirked. "I'm glad you're bouncing back to your usual spirits, Feyre darling."

Drakon snorted, and took my hands, squeezing them as tightly as his mate had. "What he doesn't want to tell you, my lady, is that he's so damn old he can't stand up right now."

I whirled to Rhys. "Are you - "

"Fine, fine," Rhys said, waving a hand, even as he groaned a bit. "Though perhaps now you see why I didn't bother visiting these two for so long. They're terribly cruel to me. — Sarah J. Maas

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says 'I'm willing lord, I'll do whatever you want me to do' except that since there are no god's actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.
The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude which is the hallmark of religion, but doubt.
Doubt is humble and that's what man needs to be considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong. — Bill Maher

A quiet meow echoes on the other side of the door though, and I can't help thinking the cat is calling out for help. I left Avery here in the slums and someone murdered her in the middle of the night. The cat is calling out for me to help his poor dead owner. — Izzy Sweet

It's okay for someone to chase me and then try to cut me off so I ram my car into a tree ... I mean, I know this guy was trying to do his job, but his "job" almost landed me half-dead. — Lindsay Lohan

I know: "Guns Don't Kill People." But I suspect that they have something to do with it. If you point your finger at someone and say, "Bang, bang, you're dead," not much actually happens. — Molly Ivins

The dead are past saving. You could miss someone, but it did no good to fixate on loss. — Ann Aguirre

He watched through a crack inside just pretending to be dead he wanted to fix each pallbearer in his memory ... it seems to me a telephone was installed in the coffin to someone yet again Stalin is sending his instructions. — Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Dawn Of The Dead is about how we're just a country cannibalizing itself, turning into one shopping mall, and everyone at the mall is just brain-dead, wandering around. Capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It's great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don't realize it's been there all along. Those are my favorite movies. — Eli Roth

It's always tempting to choose the safer road. The one you think will get you to your destination in one piece. But as you learned today, sometimes the safe roads are nothing but dead ends. And I'll tell you one thing I know for sure. No matter what your destination is, there's no safer road than the one you take with someone you love. — Cassia Leo

Nevertheless, I still wait for someone. Who on earth am I waiting for, sitting here everyday? For what sort of person? Maybe what I'm waiting for isn't even a human. I dislike humans. No, I fear them. When I meet someone and indifferently exchange such greetings as 'How are you?' or 'It's become cold', greetings I don't want to make, I somehow get the unpleasant feeling that there is no such horrible liar in the whole world as I, and I wish I were dead. — Osamu Dazai

Tiffany had watched the dead before many times, of course - it was the custom for a departing soul to have company the night before any funeral or burial, as if to make a point to anything that might be ... lurking: this person mattered, there is someone here to make sure nothing evil creeps in at this time of danger. — Terry Pratchett

Someone's always saying, "It's not whether you win or lose," but if you feel that way, you're as good as dead. — James Caan

Friedrich Nietzsche, originator of the slogan "God is dead", reported that at times he was overcome by gratitude. This admission is most interesting, because gratitude is not a self-regarding attitude like pleasure, but an other-regarding attitude like anger. It presupposes someone to whom gratitude is owed. — J. Budziszewski

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead. — Catherynne M Valente

I feel dead inside anyway. Cara made me feel alive. Maybe that's why I can't let her go. I don't want to feel dead anymore. What I think is, I need a way to feel alive that doesn't require someone else to make it happen. — Ellen Hopkins

And looking into the face of ... one dead man we see two dead, the man and the life of the woman who gave him birth; the life she wrought into his life! And looking into his dead face someone asks a woman, what does a woman know about war? What, what, friends in the face of a crime like that, what does man know about war? — Anna Howard Shaw

Is there a doctor in the house?" Bobby's voice floated into the room. My heart fluttered, just as it had the first time I'd met him, just as it did every time. The low timbre of his voice, combined with his rolling southern accent, made my pulse race and my palms sweat....
"She is. Is there someone in need of medical attention?" I answered, trying not to sound breathless but failing, as I always did....
Not answering but stopping right in front of me, placing his hands on my shoulders and leaning forward, the sexiest man in Georgia kissed me just a teeny bit senseless amid the dead bodies, antiseptic smells, and right in front of Reggie. — Julia Mills

Once again your mind explodes with a searing pain. A floodgate of memories bursts wide. Yet it is her face that keeps haunting you. Always her face. Who is she? Then things begin to crystallize. You remember your funeral. Begging and pleading for someone to release you from the darkness. You're not dead. You can't be. Then you feel her presence. Warm, caring, soothing. But somewhere deep inside she feels empty now. She has no reason. No meaning. No soul. But your soul lives. While her's is dying. — Todd McFarlane

I recall my life every day. I recall my sins and my acts of purity. I remind myself I was never a religious man. I remind myself that I have been dead for half of forever. I remind myself of nothing. I move along to the next minute. Next day. Next year. The earth doesn't change so much anymore. It doesn't change so quickly. With humans, the earth had to keep changing. But you can only replace a dying thing so many times before someone notices. There haven't been humans for years. Maybe a decade. Maybe more. I find myself loving their absence. The absence of humanity is the absence of violence. I love this peace. But then I remember my bones. My mind and my memories. I remember I'm human. I am the thing I detest. The creature that haunts my steps. It's my shadow I see watching me. It's my reflection in the water. I keep remembering. I live in fear. But still, I walk on. — F.K. Preston

When he'd lived on the streets, the rule was live or die - there was no in between and it was as simple as that. The spy game was that simple too, and that's why he was so good at it.
But there was always someone better. Someone who wanted it more. Someone who'd get it, take it from you, and leave you lying dead in the street. — S.E. Jakes

Perhaps, for each of them, I also resembled someone who was dead. I had barely arrived at Adelma and I was already one of them, I had gone over to their side, absorbed in that kaleidescope of eyes, wrinkles, grimaces. — Italo Calvino

He narrowed his eyes at me, pushed out of the booth and stomped over to the cash desk where Ash had returned and was playing a game on his mobile phone.

"Sorry, sir," he echoed, dead-pan, and then added: "She is the owner."

He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. "And she's righ' crazy, so I wouldn't mess with her. She stabbed someone with a plastic fork just last week."

"A--a plastic fork?" the man said, looking over at me nervously.

"Yeah, and you would not believe the mess. A carving knife woulda made cleaner work of it."

The man slapped a few coins on the counter near the cash and, clutching the remains of his paper, dashed out the door.

"Thanks, Ash," I said, absently.

"No probs," he said. "Chasing zombies on my phone--fair inspirational, aye? — K.C. Dyer

Yes, like watching someone flog a dead horse into obedience, Settembrini scoffed; to which Naphta replied that since for our sin God had visited our bodies with the gruesome ignominy of rot and decay, there was no indignity in the same body's receiving an occasional beating - which immediately brought them to the topic of cremation. — Thomas Mann

She knew it was crazy. That was a given. She had a balloon-sized head covered by a scarf while rocking a uniboob. Her cat was orbiting her, while hissing, at top speed.
It just figures at this point. There's a rain cloud fucking me up the ass. Don't panic, she told herself.
Her brain ran around, scraping at her skull and trying to get out of the horror instead.
Be someone else!
The two men stood, stunned stupid by her elaborate costume. Both jumped when
Dove opened her mouth to speak.
"I'm Lotsa Vampersex!" She'd increased her volume and cranked up the pitch of her voice in an effort to disguise herself.
Duke recovered first. "Hey, are you, like, hosting Voldemort's half-dead body or are you just into freakier stuff than I thought? — Debra Anastasia

I could fight with the living but I could not fight the dead. If there was some woman in London that Maxim loved, someone he wrote to, visited, dined with, slept with, I could fight her. We would stand on common ground. I should not be afraid. Anger and jealousy were things that could be conquered. One day the woman would grow old or tired or different, and Maxim would not love her anymore. But Rebecca would never grow old. Rebecca would always be the same. And she and I could not fight. She was too strong for me. — Daphne Du Maurier

I tell you, Becker," Henry said, "if you make me eat mutton one more night this week, I will have someone shot."
"He doesn't really have people shot," Alma reassured Mr. Pike, under her breath.
"I had figured that," her guest whispered back, "or else I would be dead already. — Elizabeth Gilbert

It is a terrible thing to grieve for someone who is not dead, not in love with someone else, but just no longer there. — Priya Parmar

And she realized that she still wanted Jared when all thoughts of passion were dead, when other consolation seemed like a cruel joke - that she wanted to be with him when the thought of being with anyone else was unbearable, when the thought of someone else touching her made her want to scream. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass - our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean? — John Green

Someone asked me, "What do you have to say about Rajneesh after his death?" I said that the world has never seen such a pimp nor will it ever see one in the future. He combined Western therapies, the Tantric system, and everything that you could find in the books. He made a big business out of it. He took money from the boys; he took money from girls, and kept it for himself. He is dead and so we don't say anything. Nil nisi bonum (Of the dead speak not unless it be good) — U.G. Krishnamurti

But two has never been a number
because it's only an anguish and its shadow,
it's only a guitar where love feels how hopeless it is,
it's the proof of someone else's infinity,
and the walls around a dead man,
and the scourging of a new resurrection that will never end. — Federico Garcia Lorca

You start admiring someone who's famous for actually doing something
imagine that
and I swear to you I will buy you every item in her entire wardrobe. But over my own dead body will I spend my own time and money turning you into a clone of some brain-dead waste of skin who thinks the pinnacle of achievement is selling her wedding shots to a magazine. — Tana French

An objection was made that judging what had already been done to me, if we proceeded some of us would most certainly be killed. And several others, each in their own language, countered that the way we were living here, the way we were treated, we might as well be dead already, that things couldn't get worse. Things can always get worse, someone yelled from the back, when you reach hell there is always another hell underneath. — Jacob Wren

The certainty that someone will never come back," the narrator muses of the dead, "never speak again, never take another step ... will never look at us or look away. I don't know how we bear it, or how we recover. — Javier Marias

As soon as I looked at Alphonse's face, I knew that he was dead. I had the strange feeling that I was dead myself. It felt as if I were lying at the bottom of a grave and earth was being thrown on me. When death takes someone you know, he holds you and whispers all his secrets in your ear. — Heather O'Neill

He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It's as simple as that, and as stupid and complicated. It's terrible. It's like knowing someone you love is dead but not having the body to prove it. He loved me. I know it. — Roddy Doyle

Not really," said Shadow. "But I'm not dead yet." "Huh?" "Call no man happy until he is dead. Herodotus." Mr. Nancy raised a white eyebrow, and he said, "I'm not dead yet, and, mostly because I'm not dead yet, I'm happy as a clamboy." "The Herodotus thing. It doesn't mean that the dead are happy," said Shadow. "It means that you can't judge the shape of someone's life until it's over and done. — Neil Gaiman

One of the best possible perspectives from which to tell a story is that of a ghost, someone who is dead but can still witness. — Javier Marias

It's the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. If someone hunts a lion, it's like: "Wow, they're brave!" But if they're hunting a deer it's like: "That poor deer!" I know that. I know that guys getting killed is horrible but people have seen it before. You've seen The Evil Dead. With girls, it's like: "I don't want to see that happening ... " I know that. — Eli Roth

Medicine is a golden goose that has to be killed because every time the goose lays a golden egg, someone gets sick or dead. — Richard Diaz

Don't ever quit. Never quit. Never show anybody you're hurt. Grin and walk through the cannon smoke. It will drive them up the wall. You always stay true to your own principles. You always believe in your gift. God doesn't make mistakes when he presents someone with a gift like that. It's there for a reason. Tell the naysayers, those who reject you, to drop dead! Who cares? — James Lee Burke

This is the Speaker for the Dead? Judging someone by appearances?"
"Maybe I've fallen in love with Grego."
"You've always been a sucker for people who pee on you. — Orson Scott Card

How could I suddenly go from a person who had struggled to dissect an already dead mouse, to someone who was willing to murder a human being? There was no logic to it! — Adele Rose

Clem is my first dead body. I've heard again and again - mostly from friends who've lost other friends to AIDS - that it's essential to see the corpse of someone you love, especially someone who's died undeservedly young; how it will confirm the way nothing else can that he or she is no longer here. The body won't look like the person you know, the self of that person, at all. This tells you there has to be a soul because something's missing; what else could that something be? The first thing I know, when I see her, isthat this is not a piece of advice I will ever pass on. — Julia Glass

The thing I hated while reading this book, it turns out, was me. Bad things happen, and shoulders are shrugged. The most serious of events are blended with the strange. The author pulled me inside his mind, and what I found there was a dead stillness, the somber and poignant wisdom of someone with little hope and scars across his eyes. — Hugh Howey

Something or someone lived or died so you could have this life.
The mountain of the dead. They left you into the daylight. — Chuck Palahniuk

Then why don't you know about the dead men who wandered into Bamboo House of Dolls for human sushi?" "Never. I'd have heard and we'd be on alert." "I guess omnipotence isn't what it used to be. But I can fix that for you. I've already killed three Drifters. Give me a contract and I'll get the rest. There's probably a lot of them, so I ought to get time and a half on this one." Wells scowls. He looks around like he's expecting someone. "If — Richard Kadrey

(Carnations) The only flower that, when given to someone, is marginally superior to dead ones. — Marisha Pessl

Do You Know That By Just Saying "I WANNA DIE" Or "I WISH I COULD DIE" ... God Can Answer That Prayer???
You Will Be Cancelled In The Book Of Life And At Heaven You Will Be Dead, But You Will Just Be Walking On Earth Waiting To Go To Hell. Thats What Most People Call HELL OF A LIFE ... A Life Of Someone Who Is Not Written In The Book Of Life.
So People Stop Playing With Those Words.
And If You Once Said That, PRAY TONIGHT SO THAT GOD RE-WRITES YOU IN THE BOOK OF LIFE. — Cyc Jouzy

The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born. — Henning Mankell

We'd already talked in the stacks, and I knew you were different from any other girl I'd met. And you told me that your parents were dead, and I thought that you were so ... lost and vulnerable. So when I saw you in the physics lab ... and I saw you try and take care of someone that you thought who had been through what you'd been through; could be that ... well, generous, and thoughtfull ... " Guy said.
"But you hardly knew me." said Willow
"I know ... I didn't know that we'd even talk again, or that if we did, if we'd get along, or maybe you were seeing someone else ... I just knew that the way you tried to protect someone's life that, especially given your situation ... I just ... I though that you had to be the most special girl I would ever meet ... — Julia Hoban

I heard your song the moment we were born. And years later, it dragged me back from the lake of the half-dead when all I wanted to do was die. Each time someone tried to kill me, it sang its tune and gave me hope. — Melina Marchetta

Losing someone you love is harder. One minute they're there, the next they're gone. There were times I wished they would rise up from the dead. — Denise Grover Swank

Reasons for Joy Happy are the people whose God is the LORD. Psalm 144:15 "How's life?" someone asks. And we who've been resurrected from the dead say, "Well, things could be better." Or "Couldn't get a parking place." Or "My parents won't let me move to Hawaii." Or "People won't leave me alone so I can finish my sermon on selfishness." ... Are you so focused on what you don't have that you are blind to what you do? You have a ticket to heaven no thief can take, an eternal home no divorce can break. Every sin of your life has been cast to the sea. Every mistake you've made is nailed to the tree. You're blood-bought and heaven-made. A child of God - forever saved. So be grateful, joyful - for isn't it true? What you don't have is much less than what you do. — Max Lucado

When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin. — John Owen

Bang, bang, bang. On it continued, the knocking incessant and aggravating.
Conall growled, baring his canines as if ready to attack. She felt the feral dragon rippling under the surface, felt the exact same way right now.
"Someone better be dead," she muttered.
"I can arrange that." By his dark expression, she didn't think he was kidding. — Katie Reus

So it was understandable that Lily didn't at first notice the very large man in her bed when she entered the room assigned to her. When she did, she stopped dead and hissed, "You can't be in here!" The covers were pulled to his waist, but he appeared to be quite naked underneath. "Why not?" Apollo asked, apparently having forgotten all the social niceties that someone must've taught him as a small child. "Because this is your sister's house." He cocked his head. "Actually it's His Grace the Ass's house, but I do see your meaning. You know she's a floor above us? — Elizabeth Hoyt

Oh my God! I shouted, smacking at myself to get it off. The chanting abruptly stopped as I danced about the interior of the circle, beating the chunky dust off me. It only made things worse, and I began coughing on someone's dead grandmother. My eyes watered, and I finally gave up, glaring at them from around my hair, now all over the place. Damn it, I was covered in strawberries and human remains. — Kim Harrison

She had managed to go almost three weeks without being late. Admittedly on two of those days she'd perambulated around the office like someone doing a good imitation of the walking dead - but she'd been timely walking dead, damn it. — Michelle Sagara West

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead. — Erma Bombeck

Why can't I solve this problem by killing someone? she though petulantly, then comforted herself with the mantra that had kept her going in prison: "Soon all the humans will be dead," she said, droning in the time-honored fashion of gurus everywhere. "And then Opal will be loved."
And even if I'm not loved, she thought, at least all the humans will be dead. — Eoin Colfer

Death is deceitful, pretending that peace is on the horizon. The truth is that chaos is left in its wake, claiming the souls of those stranded in life. Death is the enemy of love in its purest form. It's the one thing that can tear our souls out and rip our hearts to pieces. The miraculous part of this process is that all it needs to do is extinguish a single, solitary breath. That's all it takes to steal the future of someone; someone who deserves to live more than all the others. If only I could capture that breath before it was taken to replace it with my own. — J.D. Stroube

Sometimes maybe you should let someone you love travel great distances away from you. You shouldn't think you needed to set out to retrieve them and put them back where they belonged. Sometimes they were only safe and happy, like Annabelle Aurora. And then other times, it was just possible they were lost at sea. It would be your duty, then, to get out into the boat and search, even if the waves were choppy and the wind was howling the protests of the dead. — Deb Caletti

I have always liked reading biographies. It is the ideal literary genre for someone too prim, like me, to acknowledge a gossipy interest in the living - don't you hate gossips, aren't they too awful? - but avid for any nuggets from the private lives of the dead because that is perfectly respectable, an altogether worthy and informative way of spending one's time. — Jill Tweedie

What you do in a fight gym is learn how to be brave. You're learning how to punch and kick in a proper way, of course, but above all else, a fighter is someone who's got courage, who's dead game in a fight. Most guys don't come into the world that way. You learn to be brave through that process of getting your fear and timidity beaten out of you night after night after night. — Jonathan Gottschall

(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will?
(ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend.
IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead. — Sheri S. Tepper

We really teach ourselves. If you want to learn, you will always find someone to learn from, be they dead or alive, great or unknown. You learn from everything you see and hear around you - if you are willing to pay attention. — Alexander Volkov

There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end ...
Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more. — George Saunders

What does Mad-Eye say happened?" asked Mr. Weasley, unscrewing the ink bottle, loading up his quill, and preparing to take notes. Mr. Diggory's head rolled its eyes. "Says he heard an intruder in his yard. Says he was creeping toward the house, but was ambushed by his dustbins." "What did the dustbins do?" asked Mr. Weasley, scribbling frantically. "Made one hell of a noise and fired rubbish everywhere, as far as I can tell," said Mr. Diggory. "Apparently one of them was still rocketing around when the please-men turned up - " Mr. Weasley groaned. "And what about the intruder?" "Arthur, you know Mad-Eye," said Mr. Diggory's head, rolling its eyes again. "Someone creeping into his yard in the dead of night? More likely there's a very shell-shocked cat wandering around somewhere, covered in potato peelings. But if the Improper Use of Magic lot get their hands on Mad-Eye, he's had it - think of his record - — J.K. Rowling

He looked at the book, took my name, and consulted his records. Then he informed me I had been lost at sea and was dead. Under the circumstances, he could not possibly give me any money ... Even the fact that he was dealing with someone who had been dead for several days failed to awaken interest in his official heart. — Elizabeth Kenny

I looked around the lot. "Is he dead anywhere nearby?" I really wanted a no on this one. I'd already had my millennium quota of dead.
"You see that big bush by the Dumpster?" Jackie said.
"Yeah."
"You see that ugly-ass foot sticking out of that big bush?"
Oh boy. She was right. There was a foot sticking out of the bush. "Shit, Jackie," I said. "You didn't kill that foot, did you?"
"No, I didn't kill that foot. That's what I've been trying to tell you. Someone jacked me over. I've been sitting out here, freezing my ass off, waiting to kill that sonovabitch Cameron Brown, and someone beat me to it. It isn't fair! — Janet Evanovich

... I'm someone who's mostly dead inside but still has a little hope for something extraordinary, which, as I said, is the worst breed of human, because it means I know everything is bullshit, but that I secretly hope for the day when it might not be. — Nick Miller

And are you married, sir?" Mrs Winstanley asked Tom. "Oh no, madam!" said Tom.
"Yes," David reminded him. "You are, you know."
Tom made a motion with his hand to suggest that it was a situation susceptible to different interpretations.
The truth was that he had a Christian wife. At fifteen she had had a wicked little face, almond-shaped eyes and a most capricious nature. Tom had constantly compared her to a kitten. In her twenties she had been a swan; in her thirties a vixen; and then in rapid succession a bitch, a viper, a cockatrice and, finally, a pig. What animals he might have compared her to now no one knew. She was well past ninety now and for forty years or more she had been confined to a set of apartments in a distant part of the Castel des Tours saunz Nowmbre under strict instructions not to shew herself, while her husband waited impatiently for someone to come and tell him she was dead. — Susanna Clarke

His knees locked and he pushed his weight against Mr. Jones's hand. It wasn't the dim light coming through the skylights or the giant steel fan that waited to chop them up or the smell of urine or the dank-dungeon cells that lined both sides of the aisle that made Danny step back. It was a sense of panic, of fear, that saturated the atmosphere like an electrical current, tingling in his bowels. The boys ahead of him didn't seize up, but they stutter-stepped. Like the end of a ship's plank was dead ahead. Danny felt this type of fear spreading through his groin like cold fingers once before. A memory emerged in the soupy sea of memories inside his head. He remembered getting pulled out of the back seat of a car with his hands cuffed behind his back by someone. But then like everything he tried to remember, there were gaps. — Tony Bertauski

This is what those who haven't crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn't mean that they do not exist. — Julian Barnes

Fellow Englishman. Ladies and gentleman. You gather here today to see a live man become a dead one, and for my part you shall have satisfaction. But I would offer you a moral lesson to commemorate my passing; otherwise it might as well be bull baiting you witness here today. However I shall not deliver a warning that crime does not pay, for it pays very well; nor that a life of drink and debauchery leads inevitably to destruction, for I haven't led such a life. Here's what this little life of mine has taught me. There is only one reason to live, and there is only one reason to die, and that is love. If you have not known love, you have not lived. But if, when death comes to take your soul, you have loved someone dearly, then your soul is safe; for it lives in the bosom of your sweetheart, and death can make no claim upon it. That is all I know, and it is enough. Farewell. — Ben Tripp

His voice just stops, exactly like when the needle is lifted from a phonograph record by the hand of someone who is not listening to the record. [ ... ] She speaks the same dead, level tone: two bodiless voices in monotonous strophe and anistrophe: to bodiless voices recounting dreamily something performed in a region without dimension by people without blood [ ... ] Two of them are also motionless, the woman with that stonevisaged patience of a waiting rock, the old man with a spent quality like the charred wick of a candle from which the flame has been violently blown away. — William Faulkner

You see, violence merely creates more violence.
It's a cycle that never ends ...
You insult me, I shoot you, you drop dead.
Someone else insults me, I shoot them, they drop dead ...
And it just keeps repeating over and over again.
And for what? lol — Jose N. Harris

Someone once said that there's nothing more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman, but I think that's only true until the women get revenge. And I'm done with spending my days hidden away behind heavy curtains and wrought-iron gates. I want to burst forth into the sun and unfold and blossom there, like a waterfall cutting through rock. No more beautiful dead girls. No more sculptures made of women's bones. Never again. — Kayla Bashe

They didn't know Zane like he did. Ty knew his partner had to take the issue from every angle, analyze it to death, resurrect it, and then study its dead, rotting body to see the results. Yeah, it might take Zane four months to decide if he loved someone, and then more to decide if that was a good idea.
Ty didn't mind waiting. — Abigail Roux

I just think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness. If somebody walks in the room and they're drop-dead gorgeous and sexy, it's really fun to look at. But if someone is giving of their spirit and they make you laugh and feel good, that's a whole other level of beauty. — Drew Barrymore

Then Rin was hugging him. Relief and joy swelled inside her till she thought she would burst.
"Uh ... ," Razo said, patting her head as if she might be crazy.
"You were dead," she mumbled against his chest.
"I was? Well, I wish someone had told me. Would've been nice to relax on my back for a while. Um, how'd I die? — Shannon Hale