Waiting Death Quotes & Sayings

You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half.
You've watched dozens leave and not return, and you accept the fact that one day they'll come for you. You're nothing but a rat in their lab, a disposable body to be used as proof that their experiment is working. An eye for an eye, each killing must be avenged. You kill enough and you're convinced that killing is good.
You count the days, and then there are none left. You ask yourself on your last morning if you are really ready. You search for courage, but the bravery is fading. When it's over, no one really wants to die. — John Grisham

Death is always sudden however long one waits. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Without a rifle you are nothing, worthless, you are waiting for death, any minute, any second. — Aron Bielski

Gradually, like the emigration of an insidious, phantom population, Leningrad belonged more to the dead than to the living. The dead watched over streets and sat in snow-swamped buses. Whole apartment buildings were tenanted by them, where in broken rooms, dead families sat waiting at tables. Their dominion spread room by room, like lights going out in evening. — M T Anderson

Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives. — Ally Condie

He'd never been this close to someone, this wrapped up in something so needy and honest and raw. Death was waiting outside for both of them, but at least they finally got to know what it was like to feel this alive. — L.A. Witt

Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on - otherwise he is useless. "For most men that purpose revolves around marriage and children — David Gemmell

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want. The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you're worried about death and about your own end, don't. It's coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE. There is only now. If you have power, it's now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it. Be awesome. Do epic shit. Do it now. The clock is ticking. — Johnny B. Truant

The Lord gave, and the Lord took away, her grandmother said to her at the edge of the grave. But that wasn't right, because the Lord had taken away much more than had been there to start with, and everything her child might have become was now lying there at the bottom of the pit, waiting to be covered up. — Jenny Erpenbeck

Just because I'm old, doesn't mean I have to dress like I am none too patiently waiting for death. — Jessica Gadziala

No waiting the beyond, no peering toward it,
but longing to degrade not even death;
we shall learn earthliness, and serve its ends,
to feel its hands about us like a friend's. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Fireheart tensed, waiting for whatever had hunted down these apprentices to emerge from the trees and attack, but nothing stirred. Feeling as if his legs hardly belonged to him, he sprang down and stumbled across to Swiftpaw.
The apprentice lay on his side, his legs splayed out. His black-and-white fur was torn, and his body was covered with dreadful wounds, ripped by teeth far bigger than any cat's. His jaws still snarled and his eyes glared. He was dead, and Fireheart could see that he had died fighting. — Erin Hunter

He is embraced by nature, which is waiting, ultimately, to receive him, to re-organize his atoms into another shape. — M. L. Stedman - The Light Between Oceans

We're all bound for the Sky Road, sooner or later. How we walk it depends on how we walked in the world beneath. So you don't sit on your arse whining and waiting for your death to come find you. You go looking for it. Track the fucker down, force the issue. You walk, Archidi, you find the strength to walk, and you keep walking till you drop. Now some men don't have that strength, so you have to lend it to them. — Richard K. Morgan

His mood is one of strenuous weariness; he does his duty as a good soldier, waiting for the sound of the trumpet which shall sound the retreat; he has not that cheerful confidence which led Socrates through a life no less noble, to a death which was to bring him into the company of gods he had worshipped and men whom he had revered. — Marcus Aurelius

I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise. — Chuck Palahniuk

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I'm too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She's waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I'm eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I'm so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met? — F.K. Preston

Charles de Foucauld, the found of the Little Brothers of Jesus, wrote a single sentence that's ahad a profound impact on my life. He said, "The one thing we owe absolutely to God is never to be afraid of anything." Never to be afraid of anything, even death, which, after all, is but that final breakthrough into the open, waiting, outstretched arms of Abba. — Brennan Manning

Hair the color of lemons,'" Rudy read. His fingers touched the words. "You told him about me?"
At first, Liesel could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It's likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn't matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting.
Years ago, when they'd raced on a muddy field, Rudy was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death.
Of course I told him about you," Liesel said. — Markus Zusak

We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double homicide, we could lie in bed together, holding hands again, frightened and waiting, still wondering, after all these years, if we even believed in our own souls. — Timothy Schaffert

Shut up," I snapped. "This is not the time. What part of this situation seems like a joke to you?"
Lohka pulled up his knees, giving a feeble, half-manic little laugh. "Oh, maybe just the idea that some soul-devouring being of chaos could be waiting anywhere to finish destroying my life," he said. "That's kind of hilarious, you know. Have you ever had a soul-devouring being of chaos hunting you down so it could finish eating you?"
"No," I said. "I'm sorry, Lohka."
"That's nice," he muttered.
"What about the part where this soul-devouring being of chaos seems to have a taste for me at the moment?" Zhabyr asked. "Can we worry about that, now? Because I kind of already am. — J. Leigh Bralick

Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door. — Robert Graves

She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know. Surely someone would call, someone must be needing her. Yet each day proceeded like the one before. Nothing intense, nothing desperate, ever happened. Time did not move. The home, the city, the nation, and life itself were eternal; still she had a foreboding that one day, without warning and without pity, all the dear, important things would be destroyed. — Evan S. Connell

His red eyes swung in my direction. Without a second glance, he released the dead man's body. It hit the ground with a loud thump, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him. He was already dead, but even if he wasn't, there wasn't a thing in this world I could do for him. My death was waiting in those red eyes as well, if I didn't figure out how to save myself in the next few seconds. — Rose Wynters

Death wasn't something to romanticize. It was something to stave off, to avoid, to fight as long as possible. Even though she had her battles with melancholy, she never seriously considered suicide. Something in her trusted that there would be an upswing and it would be worth waiting for. — Meredith Marple

Embodied courage chooses not to wait until illness or notice of death demands attention. — Jack Kornfield

Death -
Death can be faced,
dealt with,
adjusted to,
outlived.
It's the
not knowing
that destroys
interminably...
This
being suspended
in suspense;
waiting - weightless,
How does one face
the faceless,
adjust to nothing?
Waiting implies
something to wait for.
Is there?
There is One.
One who knows...
I rest my soul on that. — Ruth Bell Graham

Risks? I have lived with the prospect of assassination for years. What risks? All men die, rich and poor alike. But if I am to die, then let it be while I fight, not like some bullock in a pen waiting for the ax to fall. — David Gemmell

Some part of me ... had been waiting, since Kelp's death, for certainty that God ... was either dead or malicious. On the cot, now, in the rain-shadowed room with the medicine smells, I knew it was worse than that. They were a challenge, a dare: you must look at the horrors of the world and find a way back to faith in spite of what you saw. I had a glimpse of what the purer version of myself might be capable of: enduring the loss, keeping the rage and disgust down, finding meaning through suffering. But it was only a glimpse. There was so much shame, and the shame made me angry at the thought of getting better. — Glen Duncan

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, on the ruin of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory. — Marcel Proust

We're brought up to expect a happy ending. But there are no happy endings. There's only death waiting for us. We find love and happiness, and it's snatched away from us without rhyme or reason. We're on a deserted space ship careening mindlessly among the stars. The world is Dachau, and we're all Jews. — Sidney Sheldon

It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected ... I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing ... I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic. — Michael J. Collins

There are different types of soldier. Some men are trained to stand under fire, waiting for their turn to inflict death. Others are like hunters, slipping from cover to cover. — Miles Cameron

The world was cruel and sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl or a haunted faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you'll find flies. Follow the flies and you'll find death. — Kathy Hepinstall

And now, my sons, listen to me; those who keep my ways are happy. 33 Listen to instruction and be wise; don't ignore it. 34 Anyone who listens to me is happy, watching at my doors every day, waiting by the posts of my doorway. 35 For the one who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, 36 but the one who misses me harms himself; all who hate me love death." — Anonymous

One went on and on, never dreaming of the sudden dreadful day when the coverings were going to be dropped and one would see it was death after all, that it had been death all the time, death pretending, death waiting — Elizabeth Von Arnim

People can act so nice, bringing you food and all, but in the end they are nothing but buzzards. Waiting to pick your bones. — Lee Smith

Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead. — Rajneesh

These are not soldiers, these are men. They are notadventurers or warriors, designed for human butchery - as butchers or cattle. They are the ploughmen or workers that one recognizes even in their uniforms. They are uprooted civilians. They are ready, waiting for the signal for death or murder, but when you examine their faces between the vertical ranks of bayonets, they are nothing but men. — Henri Barbusse

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

It's like being on Death Row in an American jail. You are waiting for the door handle to turn, not knowing whether it's a reprieve or just your final breakfast before being executed. — Howard Wilkinson

Grief-work. It sounds such a clear and solid concept, with its confident two-part name. But it is fluid, slippery, metamorphic. Sometimes it is passive, a waiting for time and pain to disappear; sometimes active, a conscious attention to death and loss and the loved one; sometimes necessarily distractive (the bland football match, the overwhelming opera). — Julian Barnes

Judith hated nostalgia. It was just the waiting room for death. — Paul Cornell

Yellow leaves hang on your tree of life. The messengers of death are waiting. You are going to travel far away. Have you any provisions for the journey? — Anonymous

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

For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I'm out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights! — Richard Siken

There was a story etched in each wrinkle on his forehead-the stories any long life can amass but that only a lonely life locks forever. — Ashay Abbhi

There are many ways of eating, for some eating is living for some eating is dying, for some thinking about ways of eating gives to them the feeling that they have it in them to be alive and to be going on living, to some to think about eating makes them know that death is always waiting that dying is in them. — Gertrude Stein

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait. — Primo Levi

Alannah?" He held her limp body waiting for a response. "Don't do this." He put his hand over the other cut whispering his words and healing it as well. "Alannah?" His voice begged, as he held her face in his hand Still no response. He looked at the ground she had laid on realizing that she had lost a lot of blood. Then from the corner of his eye he saw the rise and fall of her chest and let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. She still lives. — B.C. Morin

What are you waiting for?" he screamed, launching himself at Liraz. With a neat step and parry she sent him face-first into the ground, and with one well-placed kick turned him over, gasping, onto his back. "Kill me!" he coughed out, lying there. "I know you want to!"
But she just shook her head and smiled, and Jael wanted to howl, because her smile had ... plans in it, and in those plans, he saw, there would be no easy death. — Laini Taylor

We've the whole wide world out there waiting for us, and we've forever to make the most've it. And that's the thing: enjoyin' life. Not livin' death, or anything stupid like that.

What've we got to fear except the sun? — Garth Ennis

Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?
Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.
And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?
The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life
A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,
Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.
There will come a dawn or sunset or high noon
When a man will take my life in battle too
flinging a spear perhaps
Or whipping a deadly arrow off his bow. — Homer

While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born. — Barbara Kingsolver

Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Life is just one long day separated into sections by sleep. Life never stops happening until you are dead. So whatever happens-love, grief, hate, shame- never disappears. It just gets easier to live with. It just scabs over, waiting for something else significant to happen. — Sunshine O'Donnell

In the utter peace and stillness the world seemed holding its breath, a little apprehensively, drawing near to the fire to warm itself. There was none of that sense of urgeful, pushing life that robs even a calm spring day of the sense of silence; life was over and the year was just waiting, harboring its strength for the final storms and turmoil of its death. The warmth and the color of maturity was there, exultant and burning, visible to the eyes, but the prophecy of decay was felt in a faint shiver of cold at morning and evening and a tiny sigh of the elms at midnight when a wandering ghost of a wind plucked a little of their gold away from them. — Elizabeth Goudge

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

There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility. — H.L. Mencken

Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would be waiting for him to say something instead of listening to him say something, it would have been fine. — Elizabeth McCracken

We too are so dazzled by power and money as to forget our essential fragility, forget that all of us our in the ghetto, that the ghetto is fenced in, that beyond the fence stands the lords of death, and not far away the train is waiting. — Primo Levi

He would never be any different and now Scarlett realize the truth and accepted it without emotion - that until he died Gerald would always be waiting for Ellen, always listening for her. Her was in some dim borderline country where time was standing still and Ellen was always in the next room. The mainspring of his existence was taken away when she died and with it has gone his bounding assurance, his impudence and his restless vitality. Ellen was the audience before which the blustering drama of Gerald O'Hara had been played Now the curtain had been rung down forever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actor remained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues. — Margaret Mitchell

I should not have had that fear of death when I wished for it all the same. The unhappiness that I need and long for is different. It is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and lust after death. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for. — Hermann Hesse

I thought I loved him when he went away; I love him now in another degree: he is more my own. [ ... ] Oh! a thousand weepers, praying in agony on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered
not uttered till; when the hush came, some could not feel it: till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some! — Charlotte Bronte

And after his death - or even before it, perhaps - he lived on in camp legend as a demented old man of seventy who had once written poetry in the outside world and was therefore nicknamed The Poet. And another old man - or was it the same one? - lived in the transit camp of Vtoraya Rechka, waiting to be shipped to Kolyma, and was thought by many people to be Osip Mandelstam - which, for all I know, he may have been. That is all I have been able to find out about the last days, illness and death of Mandelstam. Others know very much less about the death of their dear ones. — Nadezhda Mandelstam

When Life knocks at the door no one can wait,
When Death makes his arrest we have to go. — John Masefield

Until your our last breath, lots of surprises waiting for you each day, and at those points you can't do anything, just wait, watch and react according to the situation like helpless kid.
After the last breath also, you don't know, even more surprises are there for you like heaven or hell.. Hahaha, it's the true meaning of life ... — Nutan Bajracharya

I am thinking of one woman and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the light to go out. Years ago I lay on this same bed and I waited and waited to be born. Nothing happened. Except that my mother, in her Lutheran rage, threw a bucket of water over me. My mother, poor imbecile that she was, thought I was lazy. She didn't know that I had gotten caught in the stellar drift, that I was being pulverized to a black extinction out there in the farthest rim of the universe. — Henry Miller

Why live unless you live large? Death is a reality, always present, waiting, with that in mind, live today, it is everything you own. — Jason Goodman

The enemy was not waiting for death, they hit back, concentrating all their fire on the cruiser Never Tell Me The Odds, knocking back that ship's shields and forcing it to break away. — Craig Alanson

We are like a people under [a] sentence of death, waiting for the date to be set. We sense that something is about to happen.
We know that things cannot go on as they are. History has reached an impasse. We are now on a collision course. Something is about to give. — Billy Graham

An infantryman's job is to deliver his enemies into the waiting hands of Death. It is Doc's job to protect his brothers from Death, to knock him aside and say, "Not today. — Adam Fenner

The night was waiting for me as always. And my thirst could wait no longer. I stood for a moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, and mouth open, feeling that thirst, and wanting to roar like a hungry beast. Yes, blood again when there is nothing else. When the world seems in all its beauty to be empty and heartless and I myself am utterly lost. Give me my old friend, death, and the blood that rushes with it. The Vampire Lestat is here, and he thirsts, and tonight of all nights, he will not be denied. — Anne Rice

Death is not the problem; waiting around for it is. — Charles Bukowski

I'm pre-med," he added smugly.
"Okay." I said again. I didn't shrug this time, but his jaw tightened a bit as if he was annoyed that I wasn't displaying the proper amazement at his accomplishment.
"And I'm next in line to be promoted to death investigator." The look he gave me was nothing short of a challenge, and I had to fight to not roll my eyes. What, he expected me to start crowing about my own accomplishments so he could top them? He'd be waiting a long time for that. — Diana Rowland

With every year that I grow older, I also draw closer to (my loved ones) to the day when we will once again be together. So I march through the deepening shadows, serene and unafraid, because I know that at the end of my journey they will be waiting for me. — Tess Gerritsen

Oh shame, shame! Oh crying shame! How can we? Why do we allow ourselves? What are we doing? The last little room of dirt is waiting. Without windows. So for God's sake make a move, Henderson, put forth effort. You, too, will die of this pestilence. Death will annihilate you and nothing will remain, and there will be nothing left but junk ... While something still is
now! For the sake of all, get out! — Saul Bellow

I might have starved to death. I would be mud-slick, stuffed to the guts with cold and hopelessness, and my body might know it was doomed and give up on its own. That would be better than idly winding wool on a snowy day, waiting for someone to kill me. — Hannah Kent

running to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that his mother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that his father's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence and mourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairs and down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance music below and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors. The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one in the palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of the other impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, and he passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrelling over cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumed finery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds sat disconsolately at supper. "Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing — Edith Wharton

As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe. — Libba Bray

And strange were the tales of the pond in the meadow,
And eager we listened with eyes opened wide
To Those tales often told by poor Mary the widow,
Who lived in a cottage the meadow beside.
Play not, my dear boys, near the pond in the meadow,
The mermaid is waiting to pull you beneath;
Climb not for a bird's nest, the bough it may sliver,
And the mermaid will drag you to darkness and death. — J.R. Withers

You try spending six months sitting at somebody's bedside, waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn't one of God's good gifts. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

On the seventh day of Passover, the curtain finally rose: the Germans arrested the leaders of the Jewish community. From that moment on, everything happened very quickly. The race toward death had begun. First edict: Jews were prohibited from leaving their residences for three days, under penalty of death. Moishe the Beadle came running to our house. "I warned you," he shouted. And left without waiting for a response. The same day, the Hungarian police — Elie Wiesel

The moonlight covered the tombstones with an ethereal glow, and the statues
above the tombs stood like silent guards waiting for something to happen. — Alan Kinross

We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? — Gautama Buddha

He was waiting for a man with a knife to come out of a doorway at him. All this time, he told me, he had been trying to steal death from her body. By confronting it himself, he would keep it away from her. — Don DeLillo

I don't need to jump off cliffs into oceans to die, because every day there is a little death waiting for me. All I have to do is wake up and walk out the front door. — Jami Attenberg

I'll tell you what I don't believe, Alwyn. I don't believe there's a pretty forest in the sky with castles and a white light and God and all his angels waiting to welcome all the good people in. And you and me standing there sick with nerves while they check us out to see if we've made the grade. That sounds too much like immigrating to Australia. — Beverly Rycroft

Speaking of death, LeBlanc boasted he could kill me in the waiting room. I broke his wrist. He wasn't impressed. — Kelley Armstrong

Death is the final chapter in a book you can't unread. You keep waiting to feel like the person you were before that chapter ended. You never will. — Karen Marie Moning

Thou art standing all this while at the door of eternity, and death is waiting to open the door, and put thee in(247). — Richard Baxter

Okay," I confessed. "You got me. I don't want to die. I'm terrified of death. I fear there's nothing beyond it and that this existence is the only one I'll ever possess. That's why I'm here."
He patted my leg to give me reassurance. "That's why they're all here. Even the ones that believe in heaven and seventy-two virgins and every other good thing supposedly waiting for them in the afterlife. — Drew Magary

The saddest thing is there won't be anyone to miss us when we're gone. No family, no friends, no one waiting at home."
"It's better that way," I said. "It'll be easier for me, knowing my death doesn't add to anyone's pain."
"If you can't give anyone pain, then you can't give them joy either. — Jennifer A. Nielsen

It was that evening, when my mother abdicated her authority, that marked the beginning, along with the slow death of my grandmother, of the decline of my will and of my health. Everything had been decided at the moment when, unable to bear the idea of waiting until the next day to set my lips on my mother's face, I had made my resolution, jumped out of bed, and gone, in my nightshirt, to stay by the window through which the moonlight came, until I heard M. Swann go. My parents having gone with him, I heard the garden gate open, the bell ring, the gate close again ... — Marcel Proust

So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared me for. Fate had to do with blind seers, oracles, choruses announcing death, not with panting next to the refrigerator, fumbling with condoms, waiting in a Honda parked round the corner and surreptitious encounters in a Lisbon hotel. Only the written word exists, everything one must do oneself is without form, subject to contingency without rhyme or reason. It takes too long. And if it ends badly the metre isn't right, and there's no way to cross things out. — Cees Nooteboom

Have you not seen it? Whenever you choose happiness, you become the victim of unhappiness; whenever you want success, failure comes in; whenever you hope, frustration is waiting for you; whenever you cling to life, death comes and destroys. Have you not seen it happen every day, every moment? These are not opposites, they are together. When one sees them together, then what is there to choose? There is nothing to choose, one becomes choiceless. — Osho

The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. There was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of waiting. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t.v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the same, while they waited. — Charles Bukowski

Before she knew it, she was just another set of eyes in a dusty attic, waiting for the stairs to creak. — Kelly Moran

One day blurs into the next, one week is indistinguishable from another. Their existence consists of waiting for the weekend, then waiting for retirement, and then waiting for death. — Marta Acosta

Every man's death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale? — Cormac McCarthy