Quotes & Sayings About Watching Someone You Love Die

Too many people believe they can control their drug of choice. But the drug is almost always in control. If an addict truly wants help, it is available, but it is a rocky path. The monster always calls. Never give an addict money. Clothe them. Feed them. But enabling them is the quickest path to watching them fade away completely. This may seem harsh. But I've watched my own child relapse, after six years sober. I love her. Always. But I can't help her die. — Ellen Hopkins

Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth, fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth. — J.P. Donleavy

And I'm suppose to sit by while you date boys and fall in love with someone else, get married ... ?" His voice tightened. "And meanwhile, I'll die a little bit more every day, watching. — Cassandra Clare

Whatever hardships there have been in my life I still live in a very privileged position. Fear is not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Fear is seeing a child get hurt. Fear is watching someone you love waste away. Fear is knowing you are going to die yourself. But there's no fear in what I do. I write books. — James Frey

Say that you don't love him!" Amarantha shrieked, and the blood on my hands became the blood of that rabbit - became the blood of what I had lost.
But I wouldn't say it. Because loving Tamlin was the only thing I had left, the only thing I couldn't sacrifice.
A path cleared through my red-and-black vision. I found Tamlin's eyes - wide as he crawled toward Amarantha, watching me die, and unable to save me while his wound slowly healed, while she still gripped his power.
Amarantha had never intended for me to live, never intended to let him go.
"Amarantha, stop this," Tamlin begged at her feet as he clutched the gaping wound in his chest. "Stop. I'm sorry - I'm sorry for what I said about Clythia all those years ago. Please. — Sarah J. Maas

"I...love you...Rylan. But do not fear...I'll be seeing you...again...I am...forever watching..."
She breathes her last. The fire races across her face and through her hair.
I watch as she lifted up with the rising smoke. — Colleen Boyd

Lying in their field above the sea, watching the sun go down and the darkness creep over the field so that they were wrapped together in shadow. Will propped himself on one elbow beside her, is finger curling strands of her dark hair until it was bound so tight it pulled her scalp and she cried out, and then he bent over her, kissed her, so,so tenderly, and she thought she would die with happiness. They had made love, the very first time. — Julia Green

Oh, come on, what's the matter with Romeo and Juliet?"
Megan took the movie from my grasp to put it in the DVD player.
"Do you want a list?" I didn't wait for an answer. "Romeo's whining about a girl one day, in love with Juliet the next. He has the decency to marry her but then they go back to her parent's house? I mean, what kind of asinine plan is that? Come on, their families hate each other! If you're going to sneak away and get married, just sneak away! It's like watching the girl in a horror movie walk up the dark attic stairs. She totally deserves whatever
she gets at the top."
"Are you saying they deserved to die? — Jolene Perry

I would love to love something, especially if I could do it without feeling like I was watching it die right in front of me. — Vanessa Veselka

Love equals a morbid and relentless fear of losing the other person. It's a freak-accident fear, a piece of space junk falling from the sky and obliterating him, leaving nothing but his smoking boots. It's the unfortunate-organ-defect fear - suddenly, on his thirtieth birthday, the little crack in his heart that's been there since birth will rear its ugly head and take him in his sleep while he's spooning you. It's the only way to know you're really in love, when you ask the question would it be harder to watch him die, or to know he'll watch me die? Is there more mercy in being the one who does the watching or in being the one who does the dying? It's when you realize what mercy-killing actually means, it's when you actually care to the point of tormenting worry. It's not roses and white horses, it's fucking brutal and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave and Will was the bravest person I knew. — Renee Carlino

Watching someone you love die is like driving through a fog. You know you're headed somewhere but you can't see your hand in front of your face; you're so focused on steering without crashing that you never say the things you want to say. — Vikki Wakefield

You know what Munny said to me, right before we left? She said, 'Watching someone die is hard work. Go to Australia and watch Faye fall in love with some dude named Rabbit. That should be fun. — Elle Lothlorien

Let people who do not know what to do with themselves in this life, but fritter away their time reading magazines and watching television, hope for eternal life ... The life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worth while and death welcome. There is no other life I should prefer. Neither should I like not to die. — Walter Kaufmann

Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out "Here comes Captain Smith!" So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner. — Howard Zinn

When I was a boy, I choked on a piece of candy outside the kitchen window for a few minutes while watching my parents making dinner. I thought I was going to die, but I didn't want to scare them. Our existence was so separate, a dying and a doing well, an outside and an inside. Trey Moody's poems hover in that cold, wet, refrigerator-lit place between the dying and the doing well, the outside and the inside. His poems are the thoughts of the person you love who is always standing behind you, slowly and silently suffocating. But they're not afraid to say hello, and please, and I'm scared. — Zachary Schomburg

It's so sick," Duck said. "I nicked myself shaving that last night at home, and I saw my own blood and I thought, How could I live in a world where this exists - where love can become death? Even if the doctor says we're okay, how could we go on watching people die?"
Duck buried his face against Dirk's shoulder and the streetlamp light shone in through the window, lighting up Duck's hair.
Dirk stroked Duck's head. "I don't know. But we've got to be together," he said. — Francesca Lia Block

Do not fear to live and love again, for watching your sadness was worse than death. Do not die while you are still alive, my love. I shall be waiting for you," he said. "Live and love for me... — Kate Danley

Damn you, Terry Glenman! Why did you have to be so charming? Why did you have to make me fall in love? So you could risk your neck and I could die slow watching you?"
-Kelly Armstrong — T. August Green

When the world tells us that it is impossible and when the world is falling from underneath us, and we have no where to turn, I feel the safest. For I know that you are there, and you won't let anything happen to me. When that same world tells us that this isn't meant to be,
and that we aren't ready for a life of commitment and adulthood, I still feel the safest. Because I know that you will always be there with me, for you are committed to me, and I am committed to you. I swear to you, in this moment when all of the world is watching and filled with doubts, when the entire world is slowly dying, that I will never leave your side. I want to live my life with you, and I want to die with you. I vow to you to always be true, be faithful, and be not only a wife, but a friend and comforter. My heart is all I can give you; it is all that I own. Therefore I give you my all. I give you everything that I have."
-Lily Potter — Mordred

When night comes and no one is watching, I feel afraid of everything: life, death, love or the lack of it; the fact that all novelties quickly become habits; the feeling that I'm wasting the best years of my life in a pattern that will be repeated over and over until I die; and sheer panic at facing the unknown, however exciting and adventurous that might be. — Paulo Coelho

Watching your sadness is worse than dying. Do not die while you are still alive, my love. Do not fear to live and love again. — Kate Danley

Watching someone you love ... die? There are no words for how broken that makes a person. It's like waking up from a bad dream only to find out that it's you reality, it's like watching sunlight fade from the sky, like watching death suck the one you love dry, and being powerless to stop it. You may as well try to stop the waves from rolling in, or the sun from rising.In the end, the waves will roll, the sun will set, and death will come. The only thing you have a choice in? How you deal with it ... when it does. — Rachel Van Dyken

When a baby chick hatches, it often struggles for a long, long time, and you can get impatient watching the little guy struggle. You might be tempted to help him out and break a little bit of the shell away and make it easier for him to escape, but if you do, he will die. You will rob him of a process specifically designed to make him strong. It is only through this struggle that he can gain the strength to survive his life. It is crucial (if you love him) that you let him struggle his way out of this challenge on his own.
Your life works the same way. The challenges you currently face are there to help you become stronger and smarter too. They are probably forcing you to learn and grow. If you were rescued from this situation, it might rob you of a process you need to become the person you are meant to be. — Kimberly Giles

I love you, Garrett. So much. But I figure the pain of a breakup is going to be far easier for you to overcome than the pain of potentially watching me die one day. Trust me, it's better this way. — Anonymous

I walk the straight lines. I walk through the summer nights. I walk the silver rope of dreams. I walk through dawns of dawns. There's not a lot that isn't dying. I see people parading in front of each other like insects in a killing jar, watching each other die. I walk the straight lines through the Christ machines. Through the eyes of the throwaway people. Through the wards and the shores and the cracks in the skulls of the sidewalks. Through love's howling vacancy. I am the freedom soil. I dig my own grave. I resurrect myself every night. I am all things to myself. I walk the straight lines. I walk the spider's jailhouse. I walk the think line, the thin line, the white line and all the lines in between. I wish I could trade in my eyes. — Henry Rollins

It's the only way to know you're really in love, when you ask the question would it be harder to watch him die, or to know he'll watch me die? Is there more mercy in being the one who does the watching or in being the one who does the dying? It's when you realize what mercy-killing actually means, it's when you actually care to the point of tormenting worry. It's not roses and white horses, it's fucking brutal and it can send a person running for the hills. To love is brave. — Renee Carlino

Falling in love is sudden, easy, and fun. It's like a child going down a playground slide. Falling out of love is slow, difficult, and painful. It's like watching a child die of cancer. ~ Ben Davis, Sr. — Jayden Hunter

Probably we'd have been better off born in nineteenth-century Russia. I'd have been Prince So-and-so and you Count Such-and-such. We'd go hunting together, fight, be rivals in love, have our metaphysical complaints, drink beer watching the sunset from the shores of the Black Sea. In our later years, the two of us would be implicated in the Something-or-other Rebellion and exiled to Siberia, where we'd die. Brilliant, don't you think? — Haruki Murakami