You Are Dead To Me Quotes & Sayings

No one knows what to do with me now that I'm alive. There's no protocol for how to treat someone who comes back from the dead. There are so many books about grief and loss, about saying good-bye to the people you love. But there is no book about taking back that good-bye. — Amy Reed

When you're dead, you're dead. No one is going to remember me when I'm dead. Oh, maybe a few friends will remember me affectionately. Being remembered isn't the most important thing, anyhow. It's what you do when you are here that's important. — Susan Hayward

I felt Alec's glare so I turned to look at him and smiled when I found him all but drilling holes into me with his eyes.
"If looks could kill, I'd be dead," I joked.
"My pretty eyes won't harm you, don't worry."
Conceited much?
"Did you just call your own eyes pretty?"
Alec devilishly grinned then and it made me slightly uneasy.
"No, you said I have pretty eyes."
Was he high?
"Are you in your right mind? I have never said you have pretty eyes-"
"Yes, you have. Right before you fell asleep. You said I have pretty eyes."
I felt my face heat up.
It was the shite he gave me to knock me out that said that, not me!
"Did I say anythin' else?" I murmured.
Alec leaned in close to me and whispered is a slow, seductive voice, "You said you like my voice, my abs, and my ass."
I audibly gasped. "I did not!"
Alec snickered. "You did."
I was mortified, absolutely mortified!
"I hate you right now. — L.A. Casey

I was normal, I reminded myself. Just a regular seventeen-year-old girl, about to face against a werewolf with nothing more than ... Okay, well, I did have a big-ass sword and a ghost. That had to count for something.
I glanced over at Elodie. She was staring into the woods, looking vaguely bored.
"Um, hi," I said. "Werewolf headed this way. Are you even a little concerned about that?"
She smirked at me and gestured toward her glowing body. I read her lips: "Already dead."
"Right. But if I get killed, too, you and I are so not becoming ghost BFFs."
Elodie gave me a look that said there was no danger of that happening. — Rachel Hawkins

My personal time is limited, more so than I wish. However, my wife and I have talked about the fact that there are opportunities right now that won't be there forever. For example, when the Grateful Dead offered me to tour in 2004, my first reaction was to say no, I just can't do it. Then my wife said, "Well, let's rethink this. You don't want to look back down the road and say, I could've done that, but I said no." So, we made it work. — Warren Haynes

He's not dead, Parker." He clenched his jaw so hard she could see the muscles working in it.

"Are you just saying that to make me feel better?"

"No, I'm saying it to make myself feel better. — Matt Forbeck

You remind me of an old cat I once had. Whenever he killed a mouse he would bring it into the drawing-room and lay it affectionately at my feet. I would reject the corpse with horror and turn him out, but back he would come with his loathsome gift. I simply couldn't make him understand that he was not doing me a kindness. He thought highly of his mouse and it was beyond him to realize that I did not want it.
You are just the same with your chivalry. It's very kind of you to keep offering me your dead mouse; but honestly I have no use for it. I won't take favors just because I happen to be a female. — P.G. Wodehouse

What man is capable of the insane self-conceit of believing that an eternity of himself would be tolerable even to himself? Those who try to believe it postulate that they shall be
made perfect first. But if you make me perfect I shall no longer be myself, nor will it be possible for me to conceive my present imperfections (and what I cannot conceive I cannot remember); so that you may just as well give me a new name and face the fact that I am a new person and that the old Bernard Shaw is as dead as mutton. Thus,oddly enough, the conventional belief in the matter comes to this: that if you wish to live for ever you must be wicked enough to be irretrievably damned, since the saved are no longer what they were, and in hell alone do people retain their sinful nature: that is to say, their individuality. And this sort of hell, however convenient as a means of intimidating persons who have practically no honor and no conscience, is not a fact. — George Bernard Shaw

You can talk to me, you know. I'd never give away your secrets."
"What's that saying about secrets?" she said lightly. "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. — Elle Kennedy

I don't want any money."
I put the wallet away.
She said: "What are you going to do about last night?"
"What should I do?"
"Kill that son of a bitch."
"And fry?"
"You're too smart to fry."
"Maybe," I said. "But, lady, I've been drawing the line at murder lately."
She lay against the pillow, watching me. Her skin was dead white and it made the black eyes look big. She wasn't young, but she was still good-looking. Her shoulders were round and firm. As far as I could tell she was naked under the sheet. I sat down on a rocking-chair. It creaked under my weight.
"But you want to get him, don't you?" she asked.
"I wouldn't mind."
"Neither would I," she said.
"He's pretty tough for a gal to tackle."
"He knocked out my teeth."
The way she said it, it sounded like a good reason for bumping off a man. Maybe it was, at that. A girl likes to hold on to her teeth. — Jonathan Latimer

Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ's words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe isn't big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They'd be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it. — Boris Pasternak

And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think ... Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway. — Samuel Beckett

Lord Jesus, I need you. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Thank you for rising from the dead. I believe you are the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I believe you are the only way to heaven, the only way to the Father. And right now, as an act of the will, by faith, I open the door of my life and receive you as my Savior and Lord. Thank you for forgiving my sins. Thank you for giving me eternal life. Have mercy on me, Lord. Show me your will. Teach me your Word. Guide me by your Holy Spirit. Take the throne of my life, Lord Jesus, and make me the kind of person you want me to be. In your holy and precious Name I pray, amen. — Joel C. Rosenberg

You admire, Vacerra, only the poets of old and praise only those who are dead. Pardon me, I beseech you, Vacerra, if I think death too high a price to pay for your praise. — Martial

To be dead to the Law means to be free of the Law. What right, then, has the Law to accuse me, or to hold anything against me? When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: "Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh. Wake up, and believe in Jesus Christ, the Conqueror of Law and sin. Faith in Christ will lift you high above the Law into the heaven of grace. Though Law and sin remain, they no longer concern you, because you are dead to the Law and dead to sin. — Martin Luther

My lady," Maege Mormont said to her one morning as they rode through a steady rain, "you seem so somber. Is aught amiss?" My lord husband is dead, as is my father. Two of my sons have been murdered, my daughter has been given to a faithless dwarf to bear his vile children, my other daughter is vanished and likely dead, and my last son and my only brother are both angry with me. What could possibly be amiss? — George R R Martin

I'll be fine ' Pen told me a little curtly. 'Where are you going anyway '
'The United States. Alabama.'
'Looking for a change of scene '
'Looking for a dead woman.'
'Get Jenna-Jane Mulbridge to come down here and I'll make you one. — Mike Carey

I think most people's record collections are more interesting than radio generally gives them credit for. You're likely to be as interested in the Grateful Dead as Palestrina. It pisses me off how compartmentalised music is. I used to be in a punk band, you know? — Charles Hazlewood

[On writing more Sherlock Holmes stories.] 'I don't care whether you do or not,' said Bram. 'But you will, eventually. He's yours, till death do you part. Did you really think he was dead and gone when you wrote "The Final Problem"? I don't think you did. I think you always knew he'd be back. But whenever you take up your pen and continue, heed my advice. Don't bring him here. Don't bring Sherlock Holmes into the electric light. Leave him in the mysterious and romantic flicker of the gas lamp. He won't stand next to this, do you see? The glare would melt him away. He was more the man of our time than Oscar was. Or than we were. Leave him where he belongs, in the last days of our bygone century. Because in a hundred years, no one will care about me. Or you. Or Oscar. We stopped caring about Oscar years ago, and we were his bloody *friends.* No, what they'll remember are the stories. They'll remember Holmes. And Watson. And Dorian Gray. — Graham Moore

I know something happens between the time our mothers and fathers and teachers and mentors send us out into the world telling us, "The world is yours," and "You are beautiful," and "You can be anything," and the time we return to them.

Something happens when people tell me I have a pretty face, ignoring me from the neck down. When I watch the news and see unarmed black men and women shot dead over and over, it's kind of hard to believe this world is mine.

Sometimes it feels like I leave home a whole person, sent off with kisses from Mom, who is hanging her every hope on my future. By the time I get home I feel like my soul has been shattered into a million pieces.

Mom's love repairs me. — Renee Watson

I am trying! You are closer to me that anyone else Liam."
"That would be enough, if everyone else wasn't dead — J.J. McAvoy

Still, I insisted that I was as entitled to a Survivor's Syndrome as my father, so she asked me two questions. The first one was this: "Do you believe sometimes that you are a good person in a world where almost all of the other good people are dead?"
"No," I said.
"Do you sometimes believe that you must be wicked, since all the good people are dead, and that the only way to clear your name is to be dead, too?"
"No," I said.
"You may be entitled to the Survivor's Syndrome, but you didn't get it," she said. "Would you like to try for tuberculosis instead? — Kurt Vonnegut

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

... you know, sometimes an electric lightbulb goes out all of a sudden. Fizzles, you say. And this burned-out bulb, if you shake it, it flashes again and it'll burn a little longer. Inside the bulb it's a disaster. The wolfram filaments are breaking up, and when the fragments touch, life returns to the bulb. A brief, unnatural, undeniably doomed life - a fever, a too-bright incandescence, a flash. The comes the darkness, life never returns, and in the darkness the dead, incinerated filaments are just going to rattle around. Are you following me? But the brief flash is magnificent!
"I want to shake ...
"I want to shake the heart of a fizzled era. The lightbulb of the heart, so that the broken pieces touch ...
" ... and produce a beautiful, momentary flash ... — Yury Olesha

Minute by minute, then hour by hour, then day by day. Work is solace," he said, "friends are comfort. Life is for the living. You and I know that, even though we spend so much time with the dead - maybe because of that we know we have to live. Chale has been a great help to me."
"That's good," she said, thinking of the priest she'd suggested Morris talk to. "You can ... you know, anytime."
"Yes." His lips curved. "I know. You're work, and a friend, so have been both solace and comfort. — J.D. Robb

There are so many things Blair doesn't get about me, so many things she ultimately overlooked, and things that she would never know, and there would always be a distance between us because there were too many shadows everywhere. Had she ever made promises to a faithless reflection in the mirror? Had she ever cried because she hated someone so much? Had she ever craved betrayal to the point where she pushed the crudest fantasies into reality, coming up with sequences that she and nobody else could read, moving the game as you play it? Could she locate the moment she went dead inside? Does she remember the year it took to become that way? The fades, the dissolves, the rewritten scenes, all the things you wipe away - I now want to explain all these things to her but I know I never will, the most important one being: I never liked anyone and I'm afraid of people. — Bret Easton Ellis

Did you love well what very soon you left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache. Never so full, I never was bereft so utterly. The winter evenings drift dark to the window. Not one work will make you, where you are, turn in your day, or wake from your night toward me. The only gift I got to keep or give is what I've cried, floodgates let down to mourning for the dead chances, for the end of being young, for everyone I loved who really died. I drank our one year out in brine instead of honey from the seasons of your tongue. — Marilyn Hacker

The whole point about historians is that we are really communing with the dead. It's very restful - because you read. There's some sociopathic problem that makes me prefer it to human interaction. — Niall Ferguson

He went on talking to me in the darkness, while I retraced the steps of my past with the sound of his voice as a charm with which to open the doors of the years and months and finally of my days, wondering where I could have run into this man. But I found nothing. No answer. You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all. As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The depths of winter longing are ice within my heart
The shards of broken covenants lie sharp against my soul
The wraiths of long-lost ecstasy still keep us two apart
The amen winds of bitterness sill keen from turn to pole.
The scares are twisted tendons, the stumps of struck-off limbs,
The aching pit of hunger and throb of unset bone,
My sanded burning eyeballs, as might within them dims,
Add nothin to the torment of lying here alone ...
The shimmering flames of fever trace out your blessed face
My broken eardrums echo yet your voice inside my head
I do not fear the darkness that comes to me apace
I only dread the loss of you thy comes when I am dead. — Robert A. Heinlein

Most of the really good songs are dead true ... It had to have happened to have the song be there. Every time I've tried to make stuff up it just kind of falls flat. So the majority of my work is something that happened to me, I saw happen to someone else, or a friend of mine told me happened. There is a certain amount of theatrical and poetic license. People are supposed to like it, that's why you're doing it. It's supposed to be fun. It's not brain surgery, it's heart surgery. They're just songs. — Guy Clark

I'm sorry. Were you just speaking to me? I apologize most profusely. I was distracted by the size of the sweat stains under your arms. Are you overly warm today? It seems unlikely given the cold, dead heart that surely beats in your chest. — T.J. Klune

Dear Aspiring Writer, you are not ready. Stop. Put that finished story away and start another one. In a month, go back and look at the first story. RE-EDIT it. Then send it to a person you respect in the field who will be hard on you. Pray for many many many red marks. Fix them. Then put it away for two weeks. Work on something else. Finally, edit one last time. Now you are ready to sub your first work.
Criticism is hard to take at first. Trust me, I've been there. But learn to think of crit marks as a knife. Each one is designed to cut away the bad and leave a scar. Scars prove you've lived, learned and walked away a winner. Any writer who tells you they don't need edits is lying. I don't care if they have 100 books out. Edits make you grow and if you aren't growing as a writer, you are dead. — Inez Kelley

Damn, Josie. Are you trying to kill me?"
She glanced back my way. "Not particularly right now. Why?"
I didn't even try to stop staring. It would have been a wasted effort. "Because that dress is enough to give a man a heart attack if you come any closer, or break a man's heart if you walk away."
"Now lines like that help me understand why you've got a reputation for being such a ladies man."
"That wasn't even my best one."
( ... )
That kind of dress could bring a man to his knee to propose, even if that had been the furthest thing from his mind when he woke up that morning. Hell, it was bringing me close to a proposal, and I was dead set against anything marriage related. — Nicole Williams

Don't spend too much time grieving for me, Elena. I know you're probably a little sad as you're reading this, since that means I'm dead and you're having to learn how to go on in a new way. I would be sad if you didn't miss me, so I won't tell you not to, but I will tell you to keep on living. The world is full of beautiful music, flowers, places, and experiences. Enjoy it all as much as you can. Just remember it's the people in your life that make it worthwhile...People and memories, not things are what's important in the end. Nothing else matters as much as that. — M. Reed McCall

You want to live-but do you know how to live? You are scared of dying-and, tell me, is the kind of life you lead really any different from being dead? — Seneca The Younger

THERE ARE ... ENEMIES, said Death, as Binky galloped through icy mountains. "They're all dead - " OTHER ENEMIES. YOU MAY AS WELL KNOW THIS. DOWN IN THE DEEPEST KINGDOMS OF THE SEA, WHERE THERE IS NO LIGHT, THERE LIVES A TYPE OF CREATURE WITH NO BRAIN AND NO EYES AND NO MOUTH. IT DOES NOTHING BUT LIVE AND PUT FORTH PETALS OF PERFECT CRIMSON WHERE NONE ARE THERE TO SEE. IT IS NOTHING EXCEPT A TINY YES IN THE NIGHT. AND YET ... AND YET ... IT HAS ENEMIES THAT BEAR ON IT A VICIOUS, UNBENDING MALICE, WHO WISH NOT ONLY FOR ITS TINY LIFE TO BE OVER BUT ALSO THAT IT HAD NEVER EXISTED. ARE YOU WITH ME SO FAR? "Well, yes, but - " GOOD. NOW, IMAGINE WHAT THEY THINK OF HUMANITY. — Terry Pratchett

As we dried off, Judd demanded, "Say you're mine."
The dark look in Judd's eyes was intense. The angry tension in his expression made me feel like someone had doubted his right to me and he was proving them wrong.
"I'm yours forever."
"I won't let you go. Even if you want to leave, I won't be able to let you leave."
"Wait, are you threatening me?" I asked, squinting at him.
"I'm threatening the guy who tries to take you away."
"What's he like?" I teased, stepping away from his curious fingers. "How does he woo me from my man?"
"Who cares? He'll be dead before he touches you."
"Because I'm yours?" I said, backing up towards the bed. "Because I'll always be yours?"
Watching me slide under the covers and hold them up for him, Judd gave me a soft smile. "You really are my angel."
"And you'll always be my knight. — Bijou Hunter

We are convinced by things that show internal complexity, that show the traces of an interesting evolution. Those signs tell us that we might be rewarded if we accord it our trust. An important aspect of design is the degree to which the object involves you in its own completion. Some work invites you into itself by not offering a finished, glossy, one-reading-only surface. This is what makes old buildings interesting to me. I think that humans have a taste for things that not only show that they have been through a process of evolution, but which also show they are still a part of one. They are not dead yet. — Stewart Brand

Yes. What is it, guilt, revenge, love, what?"
I swallowed. "I live alone."
"And your point is?"
"You have the Pack. You're surrounded by people who would fall over themselves for the pleasure of your company. I have no one. My parents are dead, my entire family is gone. I have no friends. Except Jim, and that's more of a working relationship than anything else. I have no lover. I can't even have a pet, because I'm not at the house often enough to keep it from starving. When I come crawling home, bleeding and filthy and exhausted, the house is dark and empty. Nobody keeps the porch light on for me. Nobody hugs me and says, 'Hey, I'm glad you made it. I'm glad you're okay. I was worried.' Nobody cares if I live or die. Nobody makes me coffee, nobody holds me before I go to bed, nobody fixes my medicine when I'm sick. I'm by myself. — Ilona Andrews

The Princess Elizabeth, of England, was found dead with her head resting on her Bible, open at these words, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." So may we all fall asleep at last when the day's work for Jesus is over, and wake up in heaven to find ourselves in the delicious rest that remaineth for the people of God. — Theodore L. Cuyler

Aubade with a Broken Neck The first night you don't come home summer rains shake the clematis. I bury the dead moth I found in our bed, scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough with dirt. The dog finds me and presents between his gentle teeth a twitching nightjar. In her panic, she sings in his mouth. He gives me her pain like a gift, and I take it. I hear the cries of her young, greedy with need, expecting her return, but I don't let her go until I get into the house. I read the auspices - the way she flutters against the wallpaper's moldy roses means all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling means a storm approaches. You should see her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing at the starless window, her body a dart, her body the arrow of longing, aimed, as all desperate things are, to crash not into the object of desire, but into the darkness behind it. — Traci Brimhall

Honestly, Evie," I huffed, flopping back to the centre of my bed and glaring at the ceiling. "Why don't you whine some more instead of actually doing anything?"
"Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness," Arianna volunteered, leaning on the frame of my open door.
"Yeah, so's seeing things no one else can, but people seem to like that about me."
"Good point. Odds are, you've been crazy for years now. I'm probably nothing more than a figment of your imagination."
"If that were true, I'd imagine you as less of a slob."
She sighed. "Isn't it sad that you hate yourself so much you can't even dream up a pleasant roommate?"
"Not as sad as the fact that you admit how bad you suck as one."
Flashing a wicked grin, she narrowed her eyes. " I'd use the term 'suck' sparingly around me. Don't want to go planting ideas in my pretty, dead head."
I threw a pillow at her. — Kiersten White

I know she'll hate him. She likes to be the only one, you know. She likes to dream that she's queen and that when the rest are dead there'll be no one who can order her to do anything. She said, dear, that she'd burn down the whole place, burn down Goremenghast when she was ruler and she'd live on her own, and I said she was wicked, and she said that everyone was- everyone and everything except rivers, clouds, and some rabbits. She makes me frightened sometimes. — Mervyn Peake

I found him. It was easy. The Church always seems to know where its priests are, even when they're traveling. He remembered me. His hair had turned almost all gray, but he still had his kindly, hesitant manner. "I told him the truth, exactly what had happened. "'The child was conceived out of wedlock,' he said, 'but the child's father was supposed to have been killed in the war. If you marry the mother now, you can adopt him. Then we will "discover" that he is not merely your adopted son, but your natural born son. So, he was your son, he is your son, he will be your son, you will have married his mother, you will have returned from the dead,' he said, counting on his fingers. 'What more can you want? Five out of six. I have no more fingers on this hand.' "'I don't want him to suffer illegitimacy,' I said. "'He won't'. "'Why?' "'I'll take care of it.' "'How?' "'I don't know, but I will.' "And he did. — Mark Helprin

One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead ... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there. — Tana French

Are you i the one who is to come, or shall we j look for another?" 4. And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 k the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers [1] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and l the poor have good news preached to them. 6And blessed is the one who m is not offended by me. — Anonymous

Without Your life I know there is no life. For I was dead in sin and You gave life to me! Without Your life I'd surely rather die! Lord Jesus, live Your life through me! You are life to me! — Dennis Jernigan

He lowered his voice. "You are a true shield-maiden; you do not turn from a scar on a man's face."I looked at him and did not lower my eyes. "My father was an ealdorman, and his brother ealdorman after him. He taught me that a scar is the badge of honour of the warrior, and this I believe."He regarded me for a long moment. "I think I am glad we did not face your father and his brother in battle," he said, "for they were of better stuff than what we have found here."In saying this, he gave my dead kinsmen much praise. I felt that praise came rarely from the Danes, and took a strange pleasure in hearing him say this. I did not speak, but he lifted his cup to me, and I again took up mine. - Sidroc the Dane to Ceridwen — Octavia Randolph

I AM RAPHAEL, ONE OF THE SEVEN ARCHANGELS WHO PASS IN and out of the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he. I bring him the prayers of all who pray and of those who don't even know that they're praying. Some prayers I hold out as far from me as my arm will reach, the way a woman holds a dead mouse by the tail when she removes it from the kitchen. Some, like flowers, are almost too beautiful to touch, and others so aflame that I'd be afraid of their setting me on fire if I weren't already more like fire than I am like anything else. There are prayers of such power that you might almost say they carry me rather than the other way round - the way a bird with outstretched wings is carried higher and higher on the back of the wind. There are prayers so apologetic and shamefaced and halfhearted that they all but melt away in my grasp like sad little flakes of snow. Some prayers are very boring. — Frederick Buechner

Who wants to see the Future, who ever does? A man can face the Past, but to think - the pillars crumbled, you say? And the sea empty, and the canals dry, and the maidens dead, and the flowers withered?" The Martian was silent, but then he looked ahead. "But there they are. I see them. Isn't that enough for me? They wait for me now, no matter what you say. — Ray Bradbury

I have a theory," Emily said. "I'm not a djinni," Yacub replied. "I'm not dead either." "I might have never met Harriet if it wasn't for you." Yacub shook his head. "You'd been following each other for so long, at some point you were bound to collide." "Maybe. I saw you fall. And I know you saved Jack's life. And Harriet and Michael - you helped them." "No. They are married. They are happy." "What do you really think about all of us, Yacub?" He shrugged. "I'm here. This is where I belong." "Do you think?" Yacub shrugged again. "Sometimes. Some days." "Tell me about when you were on the plane, Yacub." A frown passed across Yacub's face. "What plane? — Kate Pullinger

I'm allergic to latex and it makes me break out in a rash so most condoms are out for me because the last thing any of us wants is a vagina rash. The alternative is the ones made of sheepskin, but it always creeps me out because does that mean Victor and I are having sex with a sheep? A dead sheep, actually. So it's bestiality and necrophilia. And a three-way, I think. I actually mentioned that to Victor and he immediately booked a vasectomy, which is sweet because it's nice that he cares about me. He claimed it was less his caring and more "I'd rather have my nuts cut off than have to listen to you talk about having three-ways with dead sheep." But now I have all these leftover condoms. They make great water balloons though and I bet they'd be really good for championship bubblegum-blowing competitions. Really chewy sheep bubblegum. That might be cheating. I don't know the rules about bubblegum contests. — Jenny Lawson

Not enough youths fighting windmills. And the old are fearful, jaded or dead. Do not ask me what to do. I am just as cowardly as you. And do not tell me it is enough to speak the truth; that it is bravery enough. Every mountain leveled to the ground, every forest burned, every man, woman, and child who lost their shanties to arsonist fires were defended to the heavens - with words. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

There. My ears are all dead. Now you try."
Three times I repeated the movements she'd made. Slowly, carefully, but nothing left me with the impression that my ears had died. The wine was rapidly circulating through my system.
"I do believe that my ears aren't dying properly, " I said, disappointed.
She shook her head. "That's okay. If your ears don't need to die, there's nothing wrong with them not dying. — Haruki Murakami

The flat top of the hill was scattered with the bodies of dead men in the uniforms of Sounis and Eddis. The outposts of both armies had met here. As I stood staring, I thought, These are my dead. All of them. The battle hadn't been unanticipated or forced on me, as the raid in the villa had been. I had chosen it. These men, Eddisian and Sounisian alike, had died for my decisions.
When the magus stepped from the bushes toward the back part of the hill, I was more than horrified. I was perilously close to distraught.
...
When he pulled away and looked into my face, I knew that he would tell me that I was Sounis and that I needed to pull myself together.
"Your uncle," he said, "in all the years I saw him rule, never had a moment of self-doubt. Never a regret for a single life lost. Do you understand?"
I understood that I didn't want to be my uncle. — Megan Whalen Turner

I scurry out to the three-way mirror. With an extra-large sweatshirt over the top, you can hardly tell that they are Effert's jeans. Still no Mom. I adjust the mirror so I can see reflections of reflections, miles and miles of me and my new jeans. I hook my hair behind my ears. I should have washed it. My face is dirty. I lean into the mirror. Eyes after eyes after eyes stare back at me. Am I in there somewhere? A thousand eyes blink. No makeup. Dark circles. I pull the side flaps of the mirror in closer, folding myself into the looking glass and blocking out the rest of the store. My face becomes a Picasso sketch, my body slicing into dissecting cubes. I saw a movie once where a woman was burned over eighty percent of her body and they had to wash all the dead skin off. They wrapped her in bandages, kept her drugged, and waited for skin grafts. They actually sewed her into a new skin. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Lord, help me to be still before you. Lead me to a greater vision of who you are, and in so doing, may I see myself - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Grant me the courage to follow you, to be faithful to become the unique person you have created me to be. I ask you for the Holy Spirit's power to not copy another person's life or journey. "God, submerge me in the darkness of your love, that the consciousness of my false, everyday self falls away from [me] like a soiled garment. . . . May my 'deep self' fall into your presence. . . . knowing you alone . . . carried away into eternity like a dead leaf in the November wind."24 In Jesus' name, amen. — Peter Scazzero

What difference does it make?" he says. "People can think whatever they like. I don't desire their validation."
"So you don't mind," I ask him, "that people judge you so harshly?"
"I have no one to impress," he says. "No one who cares about what happens to me. I'm not in the business of making friends, love. My job is to lead an army, and it's the only thing I'm good at. No one," he says, "would be proud of the things I've accomplished. My mother doesn't even know me anymore. My father thinks I'm weak and pathetic. My soldiers want me dead. The world is going to hell. And the conversations I have with you are the longest I've ever had. — Tahereh Mafi

I wish I could understand the window in your soul. Mine has none such, but I believe in others'. It is as though mine says to me, You alone are damned. To you the daylight, to you the reality of what appears; for you the dead of Carthage will be dead forever, the pain everywhere the overmastering reality, the skull beneath the fairest skin always visible beneath the blue-veined temples, in the laughing teeth. To you, the lone and level sands covering human endeavor, the ephemerality of laughter. ... Only for others, the reality of human life, the game worthwhile as it is being played. Only for others, any kind of hope. Only for others, the window in the closed room.--or closed galaxy, it makes no difference. — James Tiptree Jr.

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

Just remember, I am not going anywhere," he said, still watching her lips. "And if you ever try to hide from me, I will not believe you are dead. I will find you. Count on it. — Diana Pharaoh Francis

There's a black Mercedes rollin' through the combat zone
Your servants are half dead; you're down to the bone
Tell me, tall man, where would you like to be overthrown
Maybe down in Jerusalem or Argentina?
Angelina — Bob Dylan

Are you a prude?' He seemed genuinely curious.
'No!' But after a second, I said, 'But may be compared to you, yes! I like my privacy. I get to decide who sees me naked. Do you get my point?'
'Yes. Objectively speaking, you have beautiful points.'
I thought the top of my head would pop off ...
(Sookie Stackhouse & Claude, Dead in the Family) — Charlaine Harris

Do you know," he said, "there are men who would like very much to see me dead. Powerful men. Obscenely wealthy me. Men who can afford to be patient and engage the services of large, ruthless brutes. I've managed to evade them all. But you ... God's truth, I think you'll be the very death of me. — Tessa Dare

It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead. — Tim O'Brien

I have spent much of my studies searching for the right question by which I might fully understand the breach between the world and me. I have not spent my time studying the problem of 'race' - 'race' itself is just a restatement and retrenchment of the problem. You see this from time to time when some dullard - usually believing himself white - proposes that the way forward is a grand orgy of black and white, ending only when we are all beige and thus the same 'race.' But a great number of 'black' people are already beige. And the history of civilization is littered with dead 'races' (Frankish, Italian, German, Irish) later abandoned because they no longer serve their purpose - the organization of people beneath, and beyond, and the umbrella of rights. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

She was in big trouble now.
"You stupid man," she said to the body on the floor. "Why did you have to lunge at me like that? Why couldn't you have left well enough alone? I told your father I wasn't going to marry you. I told him I wouldn't marry you if you were the last idiot in Britain."
She nearly stamped her foot in frustration. Why was it her words never came out quite the way she
intended them to?
"What I meant to say was that you are an idiot," she said to Percy, who, not
surprisingly, didn't respond, "and that I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man in Britain, and- Oh, blast. What am I doing talking to you, anyway? You're quite dead. — Julia Quinn

Let me give you the balance sheet of this war: fifty great men to go down in the annals of history; millions of dead who won't be mentioned any more; and one thousand millionaires who lay down the law. A soldier's life is worth about fifty francs in the wallet of some fat industrialist in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Vienna or anywhere else. Are you getting the picture?' 'So — Gabriel Chevallier

Why are you afraid of death? Is it perhaps because you do not know how to live? If you knew how to live fully, would you be afraid of death? If you loved the trees, the sunset, the birds, the falling leaf; if you were aware of men and women in tears, of poor people, and really felt love in your heart, would you be afraid of death? Would you? Don't be persuaded by me. Let us think about it together. You do not live with joy, you are not happy, you are not vitally sensitive to things; and is that why you ask what is going to happen when you die? Life for you is sorrow, and so you are much more interested in death. You feel that perhaps there will be happiness after death. But that is a tremendous problem, and I do not know if you want to go into it. After all, fear is at the bottom of all this - fear of dying, fear of living, fear of suffering. If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether yo u are living or dead. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no greater paradox in the cosmos," the deceased had written, "than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness ('without me, you can do nothing') alongside God's 'helplessness.' Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he 'needs' us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes - to render God 'helpless' - is to say No. But God is not helpless, really, because he has mercy - himself. And what mercy does is convert, change our hearts. Which God never stops trying to do until we are dead. This means continued suffering for him, which is what Christ is all about." Young — William F. Buckley Jr.

Be honest: Are you surprised that I didn't realize sooner? Are you surprised that it took me so long to even /think/ the word
death? Dying? Dead?
Do you think I was being stupid? Naive?
Try not to judge. Remember that we're the same, you and me.
I thought I would live forever too. — Lauren Oliver

Are you afraid of me?
Uh ... yes.'
The smile stayed fixed in place. 'You should be. You locked me in a refrigerator truck with three dead people. Sooner or later I'm going to get you for it. — Janet Evanovich

What Are Those Things (With Big Black Wings)

What are those things with big black wings
Circling descending from up over head
Lie to me tell me that they're only robins
Tell me that your love for me will never be dead

Today all the rooms in our home feel like strangers
I wonder what makes me feel so out of place
Why have you suddenly emptied your closets
And why can't you look me in the face

What are those things with big black wings...

You faithfully promised you'd never leave me
You told me your heart have no room for goodbyes
But tell me what makes all this distance between us
And who put that leavin' in your eyes

What are those things with big black wings...
What are those things with big black wings... — Charlie Louvin

Then Charon looked at me. That cold stare behind his glasses seemed to bore a hole through my chest. "Here now," he said. "You couldn't read my name correctly. Are you dyslexic, lad?"
"No," I said. "I'm dead. — Rick Riordan

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.
And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.
And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me. — Fred E. Weatherly

Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don't make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely. — Al Yankovic

Ah, there you are," said Scarsbury. "George Lovelace was beside himself. He wanted to assemble a search party for you." Simon regretted his spiteful thoughts about George's horsemanship. "Let me guess," said Simon. "Everyone else said 'Nah, being left for dead builds character. — Cassandra Clare

We are falling back into allegory," said the Captain, interrupting him. "If you mean by all that that the body is the most solid of realities, then say so."
"No, not exactly," Zeno explained. "This body, our kingdom, sometimes seems to me to be made of a fabric as loosely woven and as evanescent as a shadow. I should hardly be more astonished to see my mother again (who is dead) than to come upon you around a corner as I did, your face grown older and its substance recomposed more than once in twenty years' time, with its color altered by the seasons and its form somewhat changed, but your mouth still knowing my name. Think of the grain that has grown and the creatures that have lived and died in order to sustain that Henry who is and is not the one I knew twenty years ago. — Marguerite Yourcenar

What libraries give you is all three tenses - the past tense - the present tense in which we live and the future that we can only imagine. These places have teachers who are living and dead and we are lucky to have them. If I sit here and read Aristotle, he is speaking to me across a thousand years - more than a thousand years. That sense that I am in the company of the great greatest people who ever lived is a humbling experience but a liberating experience. — Pete Hamill

I hate to break it to you," he said, "but this time a pair of sunglasses isn't going to cut it. People are probably going to know you've been crying."
"I thought you were dead," she told him, her voice muffled, her face buried in his shirt. "When those bullets hit you, I thought . . . I thought . . ."
"Yeah, I know," Harry said, stroking her hair. His heart was in his throat. Was it possible she really cared that much? "I know you pretty well by now, Al. You thought, 'Oh, fuck, the dumb son of a bitch is dead. Now who are they going to send to annoy the crap out of me? — Suzanne Brockmann

Where the mind is without pain Where knowledge is gain; With you, life is not vain Where hate is a burden
Faith in humanity is not entwine The traces of you is me
I am you and you are me Where dreams are not met
Where the sun set and yet;
we still strive towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of democracy
has not lost its way into a struggling nation frozen snow of dead end;
The traces of you is found with in young soul that rise up with faith and knowing that positive activism is the way to create a just society. — Henry Johnson Jr

Are you saying you want to have sex with me this week and only get to ask and be asked ten personal questions?"
"That's what I'm saying." His response was dead serious.
"You're crazy. — Vi Keeland

In that moment, I wanted to cut out all my sins from my body and lay them down upon the earth before you. Like pieces of bark they are rough and dead, once clutching onto my very skin, all a part of me. You make me want to strip myself bare and lay myself out to you, I want you to see all my flaws, I want you to know I am not beautiful, yet all the while wanting you to take me anyway. I am composed of things that are dead, I am not a tree, I do not give life, I am just bark, flaws, stitched together with hope for something more. I wish for love, I wish for more. — Joshua Allen

There are no Jerry Garcias coming down the pike, anymore than there is a Jimi Hendrix or Bob Marley. They are all at the same level - the highest level that you strive to get to as a musician. Me and my friends - we'll all be long dead, people will still be trying to dig into what Jerry Garcia did. — Trey Anastasio

My father once told me that a happy ending is just the place where you choose to stop telling the story. So this is where I choose to stop. More things are still going to happen, of course, some good, some bad. Some things never get any better. When people die they stay dead. None of us knows why we love, or why we stop loving, or why everyone we love we lose. — Leah Stewart

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun ... there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand ... nor look through the eyes of the dead ... nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself. — Walt Whitman

It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living
we who have survived
understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me
will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you. — Joyce Carol Oates

Do or die, you'll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you'll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part
I won't explain or say I'm sorry
I'm unashamed, I'm gonna show my scar
Give a cheer for all the broken
Listen here, because it's who we are
I'm just a man, I'm not a hero
Just a boy, who had to sing this song
I'm just a man, I'm not a hero
I! don't! care!
We'll carry on
We'll carry on
And though you're dead and gone believe me
Your memory will carry on
We'll carry on
And though you're broken and defeated
Your weary widow marches on — Gerard Way

He is not a tame lion," said Tirian. "How should we know what he would do? We, who are murderers. Jewel, I will go back. I will give up my sword and put myself in the hands of these Calormenes and ask that they bring me before Aslan. Let him do justice on me."
"You will go to your death, then," said Jewel.
"Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?" said the King. "That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun."
"I know," said Jewel. "Or as if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the right, Sire. This is the end of all things. Let us go and give ourselves up."
"There is no need for both of us to go."
"If ever we loved one another, let me go with you now," said the Unicorn. "If you are dead and if Aslan is not Aslan, what life is left for me? — C.S. Lewis

Gretel in Darkness:


This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas....

Now, far from women's arms
And memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--

Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel
we are there still, and it is real, real,
that black forest, and the fire in earnest. — Louise Gluck

But when did you see her, talk to me? When did you see her go into the cave? Why did you threaten to strike a spirit? You still don't understand, do you? You acknowledged her, Broud, she has beaten you. You did everything you could to her, you even cursed her. She's dead, and still she won. She was a woman, and she had more courage than you, Broud, more determination, more self-control. She was more man than you are. Ayla should have been the son of my mate. — Jean M. Auel

German puppets
burnt the Jews
Jewish puppets
did not choose
Puppet vultures
eat the dead
Puppet corpses
they are fed
Puppet winds and
puppet waves
Puppet sailors
in their graves
Puppet flower
Puppet stem
Puppet Time
dismantles them
Puppet me and
puppet you
Puppet German
Puppet Jew
Puppet presidents
command
puppet troops to
burn the land
Puppet fire
puppet flames
feed on all the
puppet names
Puppet lovers
in their bliss
turn away from
all of this
Puppet reader
shakes his head
takes his puppet
wife to bed
Puppet night
comes down to say
the epilogue to
puppet day — Leonard Cohen

I am the harvest of man's stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget. — Eugene B. Sledge

Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary, — Hal Turner

It struck me that perhaps a lot of the people you see walking about are dead. We say that a man's dead when his heart stops and not before. It seems a bit arbitrary. After all, parts of your body don't stop working -hair goes on growing for years, for instance. Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea. Old Porteous is like that. Wonderfully learned, wonderfully good taste - but he's not capable of change. Just says the same things and thinks the same thoughts over and over again. There are a lot of people like that. Dead minds, stopped inside. Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts. — George Orwell

Are you not afraid of death?'
I am not in the least afraid! ... I would rather die than drink that bitter medicine.'
At that moment the door of the room flew open, and four rabbits as black as ink entered carrying on their shoulders a little bier.
What do you want with me?' cried Pinocchio, sitting up in bed in a great fright.
We are come to take you,' said the biggest rabbit.
To take me? ... But I am not yet dead! ... '
No, not yet: but you have only a few minutes to live, as you have refused the medicine that would have cured you of the fever.'
Oh, Fairy, Fairy!' the puppet then began to scream, 'give me the tumbler at once ... be quick, for pity's sake, for I will not die
no ... I will not die ... — Carlo Collodi

He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here. — Melina Marchetta

For me, being in a car or on an airplane is like being in limbo. It's this dead zone between two places. But to walk, you're some place that's already interesting. You're not just between places. Things are happening. — Rebecca Solnit

Am I early? Human time so bores me. Besides, surprises are a better way to assure you are helping instead of sabotaging me, said the woman who - let's take a wild leap here and call this sex bomb, Aphrodite.
A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (p. 484). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition. — A&E Kirk