134 Compelling Death And Dying Quotes

Exploring the themes of death and dying can be a profound journey, offering insights into the human experience and encouraging reflection on our own lives. While the topic itself may seem daunting, it often brings clarity, comfort, and understanding to those who delve into its depths. Our handpicked selection of 134 compelling quotes provides diverse perspectives from thinkers, writers, and philosophers throughout history. Each quote serves as a reminder of the transient nature of life, prompting us to cherish each moment and find meaning beyond the inevitable. Whether you're seeking solace, inspiration, or a deeper understanding, these quotes provide a powerful lens through which to view the end of life's journey.

1. “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.” - Isaac Asimov

2. “Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” - Dylan Thomas

3. “To die, - To sleep, - To sleep!Perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;” - William Shakespeare

4. “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Éorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

5. “Be calm. God awaits you at the door.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

6. “Oh how wrong we were to think immortality meant never dying” - Gerard Way

7. “Nothing quite brings out the zest for life in a person like the thought of their impending death” - Jhonen Vasquez

8. “Time," the Captain said, "is not what you think." He sat down next to Eddie. "Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.” - Mitch Albom

9. “Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.” - Charles Dickens

10. “I don't give a shit, Dad!""Well I do! I absolutely give a shit! This will completely exhaust you.""It's my body. I can do what I like!""So you don't care about your body now?""No, I'm sick of it! I'm sick of doctors and needles and blood tests and transfusions. I'm sick of being stuck in a bed day after day while the rest of you get on with your lives. I hate it! I hate all of you! Adam's gone for a university interview, did you know that? He's going to be here for years doing whatever he likes and I'm going to be under the ground in a couple of weeks!” - Jenny Downham

11. “Jamie: You know what I figured out today?Landon: What?Jamie: Maybe God has a bigger plan for me than I had for myself. Like this journey never ends. Like you were sent to me because I'm sick. To help me through all this. You're my angel.” - Nicholas Sparks

12. “You’ll live for as long as you live, and once you stop living, you don’t have to worry about staying alive any more because you’ll be dead.” - Sebastyne Young

13. “If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.” - Markus Zusak

14. “It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.” - Umberto Eco

15. “I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” - Banksy

16. “Memories are of the ethereal, and not the material world, that is how I know I am forever.” - Michael Poeltl

17. “Death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe. Death always comes like a thief.” - Christopher Pike

18. “Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

19. “The old man smiled. 'I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.” - Willa Cather

20. “I discovered the bleeding when he licked my hand and left a swath of blood behind, death's autograph.” - Augusten Burroughs

21. “Are you afraid to die?'Cause it scares the hell outta me,And the end is all I can see,And it scares the hell outta me,That the end is all I can see.” - Matthew Bellamy

22. “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. One brief moment and all will be as it was before. How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!” - Henry Scott Holland

23. “The loss of a loved one is like the loss of a part of oneself; an arm or a leg. At first, the pain is so physical that it is hard to ignore. The trauma is so intense that the mind finds it hard to cope with the loss. With time the pain eases, the body recovers and the brain figures out new ways to go on.” - Federico Chini

24. “I was finally beginning to perceive that no matter how many dead people I might see, or people at the instant of their death, I would never manage to grasp death, that very moment, precisely in itself. It was one thing or the other: either you are dead, and then in any case there's nothing else to understand, or else you are not yet dead, and in that case, even with the rifle at the back of your head or the rope around your neck, death remains incomprehensible, a pure abstraction, this absurd idea that I, the only living person in the world, could disappear. Dying, we may already be dead, but we never die, that moment never comes, or rather it never stops coming, there it is, it's coming, and then it's still coming, and then it's already over, without ever having come.” - Jonathan Littell

25. “If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

26. “Ravens are the birds I'll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.” - Louise Erdrich

27. “Smrt je preseljenje iz kuće u kuću. To nije nestanak već drugo rođenje. Kao što prsne ljuska jajeta kad se pile potpuno razvije, tako dođe vrijeme da se rastave duša i tijelo. Smrt je nužnost u neizbježnosti prelaska u drugi svijet, u kome čovjek dostiže svoj puni uspon.” - Meša Selimović

28. “Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many … can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference.” - James W. Loewen

29. “I make a joke of it, but... but I'm afraid of death." He straightened up and turned to look into Joseph's eyes. Joseph saw the fear there and was shocked by the intensity of it. "Are you afraid to die, Joseph?" Joseph considered for a moment, then shook his head. "I'm not afraid to now, but then I'm not dying now. When I come to that moment, I will probably be... what's the right word? Maybe frightened in a way that you're frightened when an experience lies before you you've never had. "No more than that?" "I hope not.” - Gilbert Morris

30. “I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,and somehow, each of us will help the other live,and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.” - Adrienne Rich

31. “We do not look for reason for logic in the passionate entreaties of those who are sick unto death; we are stung with the recollection of a thousand slighted opportunities of fulfilling the wishes of those who will soon pass away from among us: and do they ask us for the future happiness of our lives, we lay it at their feet, and will it away from us.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

32. “Who set Rome on fire? The man we must admire. For killing his wife, and taking the life of mother and brother and so many others, while plucking his damnable lyre.” - Paul L. Maier

33. “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

34. “Strange, how death had a way of turning a table upside down in an instant. It swept away all the dust that covered treasures, blew the fog from one’s view, knockedaway facades.” - Julianne MacLean

35. “This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.” - Wilfred Owen

36. “Sometimes, the Lord just takes blessed people because they've filled their purpose early. Everyone plays their own song. They sing their story to the world and leave behind a melody of memories. Sometimes... their song is cut short and ends too early. But that doesn't mean their music was any less sweet or that they left any less of an impression.” - Linda Kage

37. “To the wizard death is merely a belief.” - Deepak Chopra

38. “I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in the heart of the wilderness I love, all by myself, alone with the Universe and whatever God may happen to be looking on. Disappear - and never return. That's my fantasy.” - Edward Abbey

39. “It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.” - Sylvia Townsend Warner

40. “The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.” - Saul Bellow

41. “Dying is a universe of its own. ” - Arlene Ang

42. “It's harder to pick and choose when you're dead. It's like a photograph, you know. It doesn't matter as much.” - Neil Gaiman

43. “My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. “For everything in life there is always a beginning and an end. This is the tough part the most difficult thing when you see that it’s coming: The end.” - Seve Ballesteros

45. “Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good.” - Hermann Hesse

46. “When death comes you do not stay for one minute in the place it has visited. Many things arrive after death-sadness, questions, and policemen- and none of these can be answered when your papers are not in order.” - Chris Cleave

47. “She wasted and grew so thin that she no longer was a little girl, but the shadow of a little girl. The flame of her life flickered so faintly that it appeared sufficient to blow at it to extinguish it. Stas understood that death did not have to wait for a third attack to take her and he expected it any day or any hour.” - Henryk Sienkiewicz

48. “He would not now conduct little Nell to the coast; he would not convey her by a steamer to Port Said, would not surrender her to Mr. Rawlinson; he himself would not fall into his father's arms and would not hear from his lips that he had acted like a true Pole! The end, the end! In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt” - Henryk Sienkiewicz

49. “The erruption of feelings & emotions that follows a near-death exerience, or any event that causes us to stop & look deeply at the reality of our lives, is ripe with the potential for insight & clarity.” - Allan Lokos

50. “That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence” - John Green

51. “I wanted to keep looking at her because I wanted to never take my eyes from her, but still I had tolower my eyes, I was so ashamed that even now Jenny was reading my mind so perfectly.'Listen, that's the only goddamn thing I'm asking, Ollie. Otherwise, I know you'll be okay.' That thing in my gut was stirring again, so I was afraid to even speak the word 'okay.' I justlooked mutely at Jenny.” - Erich Segal

52. “One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa-- blessing it rather than in love with it.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

53. “Posthumous: It sounds like the name of a Roman gladiator, an unconquered gladiator. At least that’s what poor Posthumous would like to believe. It gives him courage.” - Roberto Bolaño

54. “As Ossie Jones crept out of his body and into the mist, his heart murmured till it was silent.” - Biyi Bandele-Thomas

55. “Sensei says funerals are not really for the dead. They are for those left behind. "The dead are long gone by the time a funeral is held," he told us. "Who would wait when the doors of Heaven are open? Only the living would be foolish enough to still hang around on earth.” - Sandy Fussell

56. “Dying was misery. Death was that period at the end of the sentence.” - Holly Hood

57. “Life is a dream from which we all must wake before we can dream again.” - Robert Jordan

58. “I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstacy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they trash in your hands as though with an excess of passion.” - Holly Black

59. “There is a thin line that separates life from death, but once it's crossed, it becomes as large as an ocean, and so treacherous that it’s impossible to cross back.” - Federico Chini

60. “And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.” - Jack London

61. “[In my dream] they slide their lips over my skin, whispering whispering whispering. They tell me their names, they tell me their lives, they tell me their pain...I can't struggle, I can't stop laughing, I can't resist these people who once were.” - Carrie Ryan

62. “Ich schwieg und dachte daran, was für ein Aschenputteldasein sieh geführt hatte, bis Mr. Wopsles Großtante endlich die schlechte Gewohnheit aufgab zu leben, die manche Menschen besser ablegen sollten.” - Charles Dickens

63. “We are so afraid of the idea of having to die… that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn…” - José Saramago

64. “Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

65. “I sit with my knees pulled in tight and my arms wrapped around my shins. I can no longer feel my feet, as if blood refuses to spread so far from my heart.” - Carrie Ryan

66. “We die well when we die with purpose fulfilled".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

67. “This will be Great Mam's last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden.” - Barbara Kingsolver

68. “Everyone wants to be the one to get the mattress pad. ... We can do this. We all love to do. The more we can do, the less we have to sit and stare at trees and think about the transient nature of life." - 131” - Robin Romm

69. “None of us are getting out of here alive".” - R. Alan Woods

70. “I'd much rather be hold up with a ball of yarn, tucked inside the safety of the house with my mother. Out there, you must come to grips with the rot and bone, bloom and disintegration. It's part of the world, this ruthlessness, this severed leg, this sun-bleached skull. I can't really stand it. All the signs point toward change, and all that means is death. - 140-141” - Robin Romm

71. “And then I feel guilty, because I know all these offers are made in vain. I know I cannot get my mother back healthy for a day. ... My mom is sick, sick and dying, and no bargaining will change that. And it's in all the books, bargaining, which makes me embarrassed. Look at me grieving my textbook grief. - 150” - Robin Romm

72. “Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.” - Chuck Palahniuk

73. “When those who name dead people have gone, there just remains the calmness of foreign cemeteries, in which nothing appears familiar and nothing frightens you.” - Ray Loriga

74. “There came a moment in this journey when I freely realized that the lives most of lead are small. Important, but small. Our radius reaches family, clients, friends for whom we do selfless and amazing feats. But our sphere of influence is local.... So our illnesses/deaths are small, too. Not unimportant. Just local in nature... - 209” - Robin Romm

75. “This is unbelievable,” James said. “I mean, you guys are out here planning to build an armored car out of my dad’s old, and I mean old, car. Mom is in the house making cookies like this is just an everyday occurrence. Once this starts, you guys probably won’t live through it, and nobody is acting like it’s a big deal. I don’t know that I’m comfortable with my parents preparing for their funeral.” “Everyone has to die of something, son,” Rick said. James looked stunned. “So you are thinking about that as a possibility? Then why go to all the trouble of putting armor on the car and putting in that big engine?” “Because I have to get back to the starting point, which in this case is the Deal’s Gap,” Rick answered. “And the car won’t make it if I don’t make modifications.” “Once they figure out what you’re doing and where you’re going, they’ll ambush you. You won’t be able to get out of it. They’ll gun you and Mom down in cold blood.” James was trying to hide the emotion from his face.” - Rich Hoffman

76. “He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialed.'The package is in my possession,' a female voice said, and the phone clicked shut.” - R.D. Ronald

77. “Dzięki temu,że powiedział mi,iż nie żyję,pogodziłem się z faktem,że ludzie wyrzucili mnie ze swoich myśli” - Jean Genet

78. “There are things far worse than death, for when it comes to us it is final. What lies beyond it is a matter of faith in what we had hope for.” - R. Alan Woods

79. “The wretch, concentred all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And, doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.” - Walter Scott

80. “In my opinion, anyone who says they have no anxiety at all over experiencing their own physical death is not in touch with their humanity".~R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

81. “Nomirt grūti, bet labi cilvēki palīdzēs.” - Vanda Tomaševiča

82. “Small said, "But what about when we are dead and gone, will you love me then, does love go on?"…Large (replied) "Look at the stars, how they shine and glow, some of the stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies, for you see…love like starlight never dies…” - Debi Gliori

83. “You had a certain way of saying my name. It was the inflection maybe, something you put into those three syllables. And now you are gone and my name is just my name again, not the story of my life.” - Abigail Thomas

84. “That's the secret. If you always make sure you're exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won't care if you die tomorrow.” - Carol Rifka Brunt

85. “I put my office right in the middle of the death they threaten us with. [...] here I sit, every day, hanging over all this wasted nothing. I will never forget what the world could be, should my vigilance never fail. And more than that, I will never forget that in a way we are all hanged men and hanged women, awaiting those deaths which cannot be avoided. Yet I will make sure that we live and die the way we choose for as long as we possibly can.” - Robert Jackson Bennett

86. “... [They] took it upon themselves to start the laborious process of cranking up life again, after death has stopped us all in its tracks.” - Diane Setterfield

87. “You cannot conceive of the depths of my sorrow, Campbell Maria Cooper." Alicia brought her fist to her mouth and her other hand to the rail of the bed and took a deep breath before she continued. "I will never be the same when you are gone. Things for me will be dim and gray and flat. But there is one thing that will keep me going, Campbell, and that is the belief in my connection to you. This thing. This crazy enmeshed love feeling that I have is real. Like this cup is real. Or this phone is real. And it will not just go away when you do. Okay? Wherever you are going, you will be connected to me by this thing, and you will never, ever be alone, okay? I want you to know that.” - Wendy Wunder

88. “Death twitches my ear;'Live,' he says... 'I'm coming.” - Virgil

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

90. “... life is a flickering candle we all carry around. A gust of wind, a meaningless accident, a microsecond of carelessness, and it's out. Forever.” - David Wong

91. “The feeling of death is not as peaceful as they make it sound in movies and books. It was frightening and empty...I never want to feel it again.” - Shannon A Thompson

92. “[Howard's] eyes were open and very clear. I'd forgotten what a beautiful gray they were--illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive, and he was watching me, consciously, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should know tell us, does not immediately shut down. So we stared at each other at the end... 'Can you hear me?' I asked him. 'I know you can see me.' Although there was no breath for speech, he now had a sort of wry wiseguy from the Bronx expression on his face which said clearly to me who knew all his expressions, 'So this is the big fucking deal everyone goes on about.” - Gore Vidal

93. “Dying on your own terms, this is the greatest gift anyone can bestow upon a mortal man.” - Mario Stinger

94. “There were worse things than dying, and those worse things happened to the people you left behind.” - P.C. Cast Kristin Cast

95. “And where does that minute go, that minute that separates life from death? I want those sixty seconds back.” - Carmen Rodrigues

96. “We cry for ourselves, don't we? Not for the dead. The dead are past caring.” - Clive Barker

97. “A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories.” - Alan Bradley

98. “They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona's hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing he might do, or say, could. Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God's will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts.” - Jennifer Donnelly

99. “I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful.” - Rae Hachton

100. “With painstaking rumination, the tips of his fingers grazed over my neck, a deafening silence. I didn't move as his hand paused at the base of my throat. He listened to the arrhythmic beating of my heart, my pulse thumping beneath his fingers. He kissed me along my neckline and throat. I almost burst apart from the longing. My blood burned for him.” - Rae Hachton

101. “...gripping the rim of the sink you claw your way to stand and cling there, quaking with will, on heron legs, and still the hot muck pours out of you. (p. 27)” - Barbara Blatner

102. “I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into my belly. (p. 52)” - Barbara Blatner

103. “One's ribs shouldn't be prison bars.” - David Mitchell

104. “Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand.” - Roman Payne

105. “As mortal humans we are born with a death sentence anyway, so what difference does a little poison make? Why not take a chance you will survive the ordeal and make something significant of your life?..." p330” - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

106. “Hamlet misspoke, Strawl decided. It is consciousness that makes cowards of us all, not conscience. Right and wrong are venomless when compared to the simple awareness of being alive. The knowledge that existence can equal something past the sum of our circulation and digestion, that those corporeal purposes serve a galaxy of space between a man's ears, whose suns and planets obey his own peculiar science, but one in which he alone recognizes the order, and only in glimpses, epiphanies that melt before he can speak or even think them--and the knowledge even this distant self is not his possession but belongs to others weighing and judging the dim and distant light he emits.” - Bruce Holbert

107. “Death whispers your name to me.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

108. “O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pieO Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,gimme a break before I die:grant me wisdom, will, & wit,purity, probity, pluck, & grit.Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice—these little blessings would sufficeto beget an earthly paradise:make the bad people good—and the good people nice;and before our world goes over the brink,teach the believers how to think.” - Philip Appleman

109. “GERTRUDEGertrude Appleman, 1901-1976God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty. --A Catechism of Christian DoctrineI wish that all the peoplewho peddle Godcould watch my mother die:could see the skin andgristle weighing onlyseventy-nine, every stubbornpound of flesh a smalldeath.I wish the people who peddle Godcould see her young,lovely in gardens andbeautiful in kitchens, and could watchthe hand of God slowlytwisting her knees and fingerstill they gnarled and knotted, settling infor thirty years of pain.I wish the people who peddle Godcould see the lightningof His cancer stabbingher, that small frametensing at every shock,her sweet contralto scratchy withthe Lord’s infection: Philip,I want to die.I wish I had them gathered round,those preachers, popes, rabbis,imams, priests – everypious shill on God’s payroll – and Iwould pull the sheets from my mother’s brittle body,and they would fall on their knees at her bedsideto be forgiven all theirfaith.” - Philip Appleman

110. “I remembered screaming then, screaming until my voice stopped.” - Ivy Devlin

111. “If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.” - Michel de Montaigne

112. “Si me convierto será porque es preferible que muera un creyente a que lo haga un ateo.” - Christopher Hitchens

113. “Prepare to evacuate soul in ten, in nine, eight.Chloe's splashing through the ankle-deep back-up of renal fluid from her failed kidneys.Death will commence in five.Five, four.Around her, a parasitic life spray paints her heart.Four, three.Three, two.Chloe climbs hand-over-hand up the curled lining of her own throat.Death to commence in three, two.Moonlight shines in through the open mout...h.Prepare for the last breath, now.Evacuate.Now.Soul clear of body.Death commences.Now.” - Chuck Palahniuk

114. “Life and death lived inside each other. That's what occured to me. Death was inside all of us, waiting for warmer nights, a compromised system, a beetle, as in the now dying black timber on the mountains.” - Peter Heller

115. “I cannot live, if I am already dead.” - Donna Russo Morin

116. “We want all the benefits of the resurrection without acknowledging our dependence on God as mortal creatures.” - Matthew Lee Anderson

117. “Death, of course, should not be feared, but awaited with certain wonder. To die was to step across a threshold into a new world, unknown, unimaginable.” - Juliet Marillier

118. “I don't know what happens after we die. It doesn't seem to me like there can be much past this. But I suppose I can conceive that what we make and do can last beyond us. Maybe in a different place, on another plane.” - Ally Condie

119. “Everybody dies. There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God. (Although there’s no question a belief in God would come in handy. It would be great to think there’s a plan, and that everything happens for a reason. I don’t happen to believe that. And every time one of my friends says to me, “Everything happens for a reason,” I would like to smack her.)” - Nora Ephron

120. “Death walks among us” - S.K.N. Hammerstone

121. “It was one of those rare times when remembering the dead was more inmportant than tending to the needs of the living.” - Dean Koontz

122. “‎"The days are hot and the dead lie unburied. We cannot fetch them all in, if we did we should not know what to do with them. The shells will bury them...” - Enrich M. Remarque

123. “They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,Like petals from a rose,When suddenly across the luneA wind with fingers goes.They perished in the seamless grass,No eye could find the place;But God on his repealless listCan summon every face” - Emily Dickinson

124. “Morir es tan solo una forma particularmente exacta de envejecer.” - Alessandro Baricco

125. “Her past is behind her, her future is of little concern. She moves towards the grave, at her own speed.” - Anne Enright

126. “I’m curious about why there’s so much honor given to death, when there is no honor in losing someone you love.” - Mackie Burt

127. “It was during this terrible night that the three wounded died, and the jeeps froze solid.” - Pat Frank

128. “Ah yes, a great victory, this 'sport'. I am sure El Toro appreciates the applause Jumping in the Puddles of Life” - Loretta Livingstone

129. “My mother died of colon cancer one week after my eleventh birthday, and that fact has shaped my life. All that I have become and much that I have not become, I trace directly or indirectly to her death. ... In my professional and personal life, I have lived with the awareness of death's imminence for more than half a century, and labored in its constant presence for all but the first decade of that time.” - Sherwin Nuland

130. “When you look at pictures of people you know are dead, there is something different about the eyes. As if they anticipated their particular fate.It is a visceral recognition. I told myself I was getting too fanciful and went to bed.” - John D. MacDonald

131. “I've been to the other side...You're dead there, too.” - Courtney Kirchoff

132. “Sometimes Edith came into the room and sat on the bed beside him and they talked. They talked of trivial things—of people they knew casually, of a new building going up on the campus, of an old one torn down; but what they said did not seem to matter. A new tranquility had come between them. It was a quietness that was like the beginning of love; and almost without thinking, Stoner knew why it had come. They had forgiven themselves for the harm they had done each other, and they were rapt in a regard of what their life together might have been.Almost without regret he looked at her now; in the soft light of late afternoon her face seemed young and unlined. If I had been stronger, he thought; if I had known more; if I could have understood. And finally, mercilessly, he thought: if I had loved her more. As if it were a long distance it had to go, his hand moved across the sheet that covered him and touched her hand. She did not move; and after a while he drifted into a kind of sleep.” - John Williams

133. “Heroes are damned. No mortal conquers Death.” - Shan Sa

134. “I miss your face. That big bright smile. You always had it, in any weather. It's hard for me to find one these days. These cold November days. Except when I think of you.” - Kellie Elmore