138 Profound Quotes About Dying

Life and death have always been profound topics that evoke a range of emotions and thoughts. Throughout history, poets, philosophers, and thinkers have sought to encapsulate the essence of death and its intrinsic link to life through the power of words. These reflections often offer comfort, provoke introspection, and inspire deeper understanding, serving as a reminder of mortality's role in shaping the human experience. In this collection, we delve into 138 of the most impactful quotes about dying, each offering unique insights into the mysteries and truths that accompany the end of life. Whether you seek solace, motivation, or a fresh perspective, these quotes promise to resonate and invite contemplation on the inevitable journey we all share.

1. “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” - Ray Bradbury

2. “What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.” - Douglas Adams

3. “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.” - Leonardo da Vinci

4. “Naruto: I bet you're dying to know my name!Gaara: I couldn't care less.” - Masashi Kishimoto

5. “I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.” - Gayle Forman

6. “I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

7. “The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.” - T.S. Eliot

8. “They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past and go into the never-ending future, waiting themselves for death, at the foot of the dead, in a holy temple. - I get a vision of myself and the two little boys hung up in a great endless universe with nothing overhead and nothing under bbut the Infinite Nothingness, the Enormousness of it, the dead without number in all directions of existence whether inward into the atom-worlds of your own body or outward to the universe which may only be one atom in an infinity of atom-worlds and each atom-world only a figure of speech - inward, outward, up and down, nothing but emptiness and divine majesty and silence for the two little boys and me.” - Jack Kerouac

9. “Garraty wondered how it would be, to lie in the biggest, dustiest library silence of all, dreaming endless, thoughtless dreams behind your gummed-down eyelids, dressed forever in your Sunday suit. No worries about money, success, fear, joy, pain, sorrow, sex, or love. Absolute zero. No father, mother, girlfriend, lover. The dead are orphans. No company but the silence like a moth's wing. An end to the agony of movement, to the long nightmare of going down the road. The body in peace, stillness, and order. The perfect darkness of death.How would that be? Just how would that be?” - Stephen King

10. “but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.” - Philip K. Dick

11. “And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.” - Mark Doty

12. “It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

13. “DON'T YOU DARE DIE ON ME, JEZEBEL! DON'T YOU DARE! Or I'll follow you to the next world and KILL you.” - L.J. Smith

14. “What happens if a car comes? We die.” - Nicholas Sparks

15. “May a man live well-, and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.” - Roman Payne

16. “Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying” - Thomas Paine

17. “Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.” - John Green

18. “We just did an awesome job of not dying.” - John Green

19. “How ironic, she thought, as she fell to her certain death, that at that moment she would have given anything to be a giant goose again.” - Michael Buckley

20. “What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.” - Albert Camus

21. “He wanted to die. He prayed for it. Through the roar in his ears, he begged for it.” - V.S. Carnes

22. “But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.” - Mitch Albom

23. “There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.” - Victor Hugo

24. “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” - Dylan Thomas

25. “It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.” - Gail Caldwell

26. “Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime” - Samuel Butler

27. “I glimpsed the man's face with the shine of death on it. They laid him down there in the open. They had brought him there to be close to his death, I understood this also at the same moment. For who would wish to see a companion gasp his last on a jolting cart? We desire to keep the dying and the newly dead close before our eyes so as to give them full meed of pity. Our Lord was brought down to be pitied, on the Cross He was too far away.” - Barry Unsworth

28. “That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.” - Ray Bradbury

29. “Come, my child," I said, trying to lead her away. "Wish good-bye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries.""Good-bye, poor hare!" Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child."Oh, my darling, my darling!" she moaned, over and over again. "And God meant your life to be so beautiful!” - Lewis Carroll

30. “Dying is a dull, dreary affair. my advice is that you have nothing whatever to with it.” - William Somerset Maugham

31. “live to the fullest or die;and die you will anyway, so start living!” - Christopher S. Hyatt

32. “Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever” - Bob Hicok

33. “In life, more than in anything else, it isn’t easy to end up alive.” - Roman Payne

34. “When I am dying, I should like my life taken out under general anaesthetic, exactly as if it were a diseased appendix.” - Richard Dawkins

35. “I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death.” - Thomas Nagel

36. “The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.” - Anthony T. Kronman

37. “Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. (“Death Ship”)” - Richard Matheson

38. “You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive.” - Jeff Tweedy

39. “Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.” - John Mortimer

40. “Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.” - Stevie Smith

41. “Life went on, despite all the dying.” - Oliver Potzsch

42. “Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.” - Lemony Snicket

43. “Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.” - Ernest Hemingway

44. “I think that dying is the easy part of life; for in waking each day and living in every moment, therein lies the challenge” - Jeremy Aldana

45. “Silver’s sweet and gold’s our mother, but once you’re dead they’re worth less than that last shit you take as you lie dying.” - George R.R. Martin

46. “He's lost his colour very far from here,Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry” - Wilfred Owen

47. “The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.” - Terence McKenna

48. “Things change after you die, though, I guess because dying is the loneliest thing you can do.” - Lauren Oliver

49. “It’s very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.” - Mitch Albom

50. “I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.” - Veronica Roth

51. “After sixty-one years together, she simply clutched my hand and exhaled.” - Sara Gruen

52. “…and he wasn't reconciled to dying. Dora told him he was going to a better world. "Mebbe, mebbe," says poor Ben, "but I'm sorter used to the imperfections of this one.” - L.M. Montgomery

53. “I liked being a person. I wanted to keep at it.” - John Green

54. “I wish Italy would stop being a crybaby. I wish he would kick his bad habit of wanting to eat pasta everywhere. I wish he would stop getting a stomachache every time he ate geleto. I wish he would learn to throw a grenade properly. I wish his older brother would stop trying to punch me. I wish-"*babble babble babble*"Germany . . . That's impossible . . .” - Hidekaz Himaruya

55. “You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.” - Chuck Palahniuk

56. “Part of this experience involves your being able to say to a person who is dying, "You are loved. You are beautiful. You are like a newborn babe, going into another realm. Release now anyone, and everything, that is a burden to you. Release everything and know that you have lived your life to the fullest. There is no judgment on you. Go in peace, put a smile on your face, and release any judgments you hold. Relax, and allow your life to have meaning as you embark on the next phase of your identity.” - Barbara Marciniak

57. “I always had understood that dying of love was mere poetic license.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

58. “The over-weight and out of shape guy who owned the house had apparently decided that having a half-million dollar house meant that he couldn’t afford to hire someone to clean out his gutters. Now he was dead with what looked to me like a broken neck after the ladder had slipped. He’d taken the plunge into his fancy landscaping—complete with rock garden. But hey, his fucking gutters were clean.” - Diana Rowland

59. “Ian " she said quietly "I'd rather die than go back to you." "Be careful what you ask for you may get what you want.” - Amanda Stephan

60. “If it had been a heart attack, the newspapermight have used the word massive,as if a mountain range had openedinside her, but insteadit used the word suddenly, a light coming onin an empty room. The telephonefell from my shoulder, a black parrot repeatingsomething happened, something awfula sunday, dusky. If it had beenterminal, we could have cradled heras she grew smaller, wiped her mouth,said good-bye. But it was sudden,how overnight we could be orphaned& the world became a bell we'd crawl inside& the ringing all we'd eat.” - Nick Flynn

61. “Yeah.You got me through” - Alyxandra Harvey

62. “Why did it take the threat of dying to truly notice how exquisite a sunrise or sunset could be?” - Suzanne Woods Fisher

63. “A sematary," I say. "A what?" Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it's short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle."It's a place for burying dead folk," I say.Her eyes widen. "A place for doing what?""Don't people die in space?" I ask."Yeah," she says. "But we burn them. We don't put them in holes." She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. "How can this be sanitary?” - Patrick Ness

64. “Dying seems less sad than having lived too little.” - Gloria Steinem

65. “I think it's something like Mr. Peter Sloane and the octogenarians. The other evening Mrs. Sloane was reading a newspaper ans she said to Mr. Sloane 'I see here that another octogenarian has just died. What is an Octogenarian, Peter?' And Mr. Sloane said he didn't know, but they must be very sickly creatures, for you never heard tell of them but they were dying.” - L. M. Montgomery

66. “The thought of all that happiness was hard to bear. What's the point of happiness when all it does is throw the facts of dying into clear relief?” - Sebastian Faulks

67. “What we call life...is the combination of the Five Aggregates, a combination of physical and mental energies. These are constantly changing; they do not remain the same for two consecutive moments. Every moment they are born and they die. 'When the Aggregates arise, decay and die, O bhikkhu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.' This, even now during this life time, every moment we are born and die, but we continue. If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or a Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?” - Walpola Rahula

68. “Living is too hard right now. Dying is easy. Let me die.” - Kristen Cashore

69. “Let my heiress have full rights,Live in my house, sing songs that I composed.Yet how slowly my strength ebbs,How the tortured breast craves air.The love of my friends, my enemies' rancorAnd the yellow roses in my bushy garden,And a lover's burning tenderness—all thisI bestow upon you, messenger of dawn.Also the glory for which I was born,For which my star, like some whirlwind, soaredAnd now falls. Look, its fallingProphesies your power, love and inspiration.Preserving my generous bequest,You will live long and worthily.Thus it will be. You see, I am content,Be happy, but remember me.” - Anna Akhmatova

70. “Flowers, cold from the dew,And autumn's approaching breath,I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,Which haven't faded yet.In their nights, fragrantly resinous,Entwined with delightful mystery,They will breathe in her springlikeExtraordinary beauty.But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,From her shing head they will flutterAnd fall—and before herThey will die, faintly fragrant still.And, impelled by faithful longing,My obedient gaze will feast upon them—With a reverent hand,Love will gather their rotting remains.” - Anna Akhmatova

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

72. “Sterven is echter de eenzaamste gebeurtenis van het leven. We worden er niet alleen door van anderen afgescheiden, maar daarnaast stelt het ons ook bloot aan een nog angstaanjagender vorm van eenzaamheid: het is een scheiding van de wereld zelf.” - Irvin D. Yalom

73. “I wish I had a memory of that first violent shove, the shock of cold air, the sting of oxygen into new lungs. Everyone should remember being born. It doesn't seem fair that we only remember dying.” - Lauren DeStefano

74. “The Nevernever is dying, human. It grows smaller and smaller every decade. Too much progress, too much technology. Mortals are losing their faith in anything but science. Even the children of man are consumed by progress. They sneer at the old stories and are drawn to the newest gadgets, computers, or video games. They no longer believe in monsters of magic. As cities grown and technology takes over the world, belief and imagination fade away, and so do we.""What can we do to stop it?" I whispered."Nothing." Grimalkin raised a hind leg and scratched an ear. "Maybe the Nevenever will hold out till the end of the world. Maybe it will disappear in a few centuries. Everything dies eventually, human.” - Julie Kagawa

75. “He was pale as only one state on Bhast dictated—not lacking color necessarily or vitality, certainly. Fey white was more comparable to a pearl; the color subtle and the luster soft, but still vibrant. In spite of the tragedy that could come with it, it was not a dying state. It was a state of living…sometimes much more brilliantly than people could cope with, including the Fey individuals themselves.” - T.A. Miles

76. “Just as I am watching a tongue of blue flame rising in the fire, and my lamp is burning low, the horrible contraction will begin in my chest. I shall only have time to reach the bell, and pull it violently, before the sense of suffocation will come. No one will answer my bell. I know why. My two servants are lovers, and will have quarrelled. My housekeeper will have rushed out of the house in a fury, two hours before, hoping that Perry will believe she has gone to drown herself. Perry is alarmed at last, and is gone out after her. The little scullery-maid is asleep on a bench: she never answers the bell; it does not wake her. The sense of suffocation increases: my lamp goes out with a horrible stench: I make a great effort, and snatch at the bell again. I long for life, and there is no help. I thirsted for the unknown: the thirst is gone. 0 God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it. I am content. Agony of pain and suffocation - and all the while the earth, the fields, the pebbly brook at the bottom of the rookery, the fresh scent after the rain, the light of the morning through my chamber window, the warmth of the hearth after the frosty air - will darkness close over them for ever?Darkness-darkness-no pain-nothing but darkness: but I am passing on and on through the darkness: my thought stays in the darkness, but always with a sense of moving onward ... ("The Lifted Veil")” - Mary Ann Evans

77. “I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven - the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it - it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition - make haste - oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still - ubi saeoa indignatio ulterius cor lacerate nequit; the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them ("The Lifted Veil")” - Mary Ann Evans

78. “Who worries for dying? If I close my eyes tonight, I will either dream, or not, or my eyes will open and I will be here again. And if none of those happen, and I do not wake? Who worries for dying?” - Roman Payne

79. “Toute fin de vie quelconque s'apparente plus ou moins au rangement; on n'a plus envie de se lancer dans un projet neuf, on se contente d'expédier les affaires courantes. Toute chose que l'on n'a jamais faite, fût-elle aussi anodine que préparer une mayonnaise ou disputer une partie d'échecs, devient peu à peu inaccessible, le désir de toute nouvelle expérience comme de toute nouvelle sensation disparaît absolument. (La possibilité d'une île, Daniel 1,23)” - MICHEL HOUELLEBECK

80. “Worry is yet another side effect of dying.” - John Green

81. “LXXIXWhen I die, I want your hands on my eyes.I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more.I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.I want what I love to continue to live,and you whom I love and sang above everything else.to continue to flourish, full-flowered.So that you can reach everything my love directs you to. So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,so that everything can learn the reason for my song.” - Pablo Neruda

82. “How mighty you are as death comes upon you and your color fades. Yet from life and lush to bold array, screaming into the night.” - Kellie Elmore

83. “It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.” - Stephen King

84. “Every atom in me feels composed of lead. This is what dying is: a pull to the ground.” - Sonya Hartnett

85. “Lew had never seen a dead man before. He just stood there, and looked and looked. Then he went a step closer, and looked some more. 'So that's what it's like!' he murmured inaudibly. Finally Lew reached out slowly and touched him on the face, and cringed as he met the clammy feel of it, pulled his hand back and whipped it down, as though to get something off it. The flesh was still warm and Lew knew suddenly he had no time alibi.He threw something over that face and that got rid of the awful feeling of being watched by something from the other world. After that Lew wasn't afraid to go near him; he just looked like a bundle of old clothes. The dead man was on his side, and Lew fiddled with the knife-hilt, trying to get it out. It was caught fast, so he let it alone after grabbing it with his fingers from a couple of different directions. Next he went through his pockets, thinking he'd be helping to identify him.The man was Luther Kemp, forty-two, and he lived on 79th Street. But none of that was really true any more, Lew thought, mystified; he'd left it all behind. His clothes and his home and his name and his body and the show he'd paid to see were here. But where the hell had he gone to, anyway? Again that weird feeling came over Lew momentarily, but he brushed it aside. It was just that one of the commonest things in life - death - was still strange to him. But after strangeness comes familiarity, after familiarity, contempt. ("Dusk To Dawn")” - Cornell Woolrich

86. “Every day was there to be lived or to mark one's departure from this world.” - Paulo Coelho

87. “Its hard to die. Harder to live” - Dan Simmons

88. “Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.I fidgeted around with the puzzle pieces for a while longer, but I wasn't lucky. Nothing seemed to fit without a whole lot of work.Then I had this thought: What if it was enough to realize that you would die someday, that none of this would go on forever? Would that be enough?” - Carol Rifka Brunt

89. “He wore the memory of her embrace like armor, and though he knew it would not save his life, it would be all that was left to him to ease his passage into whatever lay beyond.” - Andrew Levkoff

90. “Don't we all hope to die with a smile on our faces?” - Jeff O'Brien

91. “Dreams link us to those who have already left this life.” - Doug Dillon

92. “It was like that all the time, in those years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.” - Robert Silverberg

93. “What was I was dying for? The sins of the past? The wrongs of the present? Did it even matter?” - Dana Michelle Burnett

94. “There is absolutely no way someone cannot be affected, or cannnot learn vital lessons by being forced to dwell in the margins of a hindering repose as the one loved by so very few."Dying and Loving It” - Milkweed L. Augustine

95. “And he's alone there, with the unconscious pilot lying a little way off for company, and some other guy he's never even seen, only spoken to over the radio.He wants to sleep so badly - dying they call it - and he can't. Something's bothering him to keep him awake. ("Jane Brown's Body")” - Cornell Woolrich

96. “And what cats have to tellon each return from hellis this: that dying is what the living do, that dying is what the loving do, and that dead dogs are those who do not knowthat dying is what, to live, each has to do.” - Alastair Reid

97. “Reading Aloud to My Father I chose the book haphazardfrom the shelf, but with Nabokov's firstsentence I knew it wasn't the thingto read to a dying man:The cradle rocks above an abyss, it began,and common sense tells us that our existenceis but a brief crack of lightbetween two eternities of darkness.The words disturbed both of us immediately,and I stopped. With music it was the same --Chopin's Piano Concerto — he asked meto turn it off. He ceased eating, and dranklittle, while the tumors briskly appropriatedwhat was left of him.But to return to the cradle rocking. I thinkNabokov had it wrong. This is the abyss.That's why babies howl at birth,and why the dying so often reachfor something only they can apprehend.At the end they don't want their handsto be under the covers, and if you should putyour hand on theirs in a tentative gestureof solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;and you must honor that desire,and let them pull it free.” - Jane Kenyon

98. “We Let the Boat DriftI set out for the pond, crossing the ravine where seedling pines start up like sparks between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.The grass in the field would make a second crop if early autumn rains hadn't washed the goodness out. After the night's hard frost it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.The water is utterly still. Here and therea black twig sticks up. It's five years today, and even now I can't accept what cancer did to him -- not death so much as the annihilation of the whole man, sense by sense, thought by thought, hope by hope.Once we talked about the life to come. I took the Bible from the nightstand and offered John 14: "I go to prepare a place for you.""Fine. Good," he said. "But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'" And he wept.My neighbor honks and waves driving by. She counsels troubled students; keeps bees; her goats follow her to the mailbox.Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond. Something terrible at school had shaken her. We talked quietly far from shore. The paddlesrested across our laps; glittering dropsfell randomly from their tips. The lightaround us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-let us get quite close before it dove, coming upafter a long time, and well away from humankind” - Jane Kenyon

99. “It isn't dying I'm afraid of, it isn't that at all; I know what it is to die, I've died already. It is the endless obliteration, the knowledge that there will never be anything else. That's what I can't stand, to try so hard and to end in nothing. You know what I mean, don't you? ... I really loved to write.” - Cornell Woolrich

100. “Welcome to Final Forum. Use this board to communicate with other who are completers. Please note: Participants may not attempt to dissuade or discourage self termination. Disregard for free will informed consent will result in immediate removal from the board. Future access to Through-The-Light will be denied. This board is monitored at all times."That's comforting. I've been to suicide boards before where people get on and say stuff like, "Don't do it. Suicide is not the answer."They don't know the question.Or, "Life's a bitch. Get used to it."Thanks."Suicide is the easy way out."If it's so easy, why am I still here?And my favorite: "God loves you. Life is the most precious gift from God. You will break God's heart if you throw His gift away."God has a heart? That's news to me.People on boards are very, very shallow.The Final Forum has a long list of topic, including: Random Rants, Bullied, Divorce, Disease, So Tired, Hate This Life, Bleak, Bequests, Attempts.Already I like this board. I start with Random Rants.” - Julie Anne Peters

101. “Because through the heavy water, I heard the sound of an angel calling my name, calling me to the only heaven I wanted.” - Stephenie Meyer

102. “I wanted to ask my father about his regrets. I wanted to ask him what was the worst thing he'd ever done. His greatest sin. I wanted to ask him if there was any reason why the Catholic Church would consider him for sainthood. I wanted to open up his dictionary and find the definitions for faith, hope, goodness, sadness, tomato, son, mother, husband, virginity, Jesus, wood, sacrifice, pain, foot, wife, thumb, hand, bread, and sex. "Do you believe in God?" I asked my father."God has lots of potential," he said."When you pray," I asked him. "What do you pray about?""That's none of your business," he said. We laughed. We waited for hours for somebody to help us. What is an Indian? I lifted my father and carried him across every border.” - Sherman Alexie The Toughest Indian in the World

103. “Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man - all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died - what is there to be afraid of?It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I'm afraid of being rushed.” - Christopher Isherwood

104. “Where have you been?" I asked weakly. A few minutes ago I would have rather died than questioned him. Let him know I care. But I'm too sick to be strong, kick ass Rayne at the moment."Vegas" he says.I raise an eyebrows. "Uh, okay. Win anything?" I can't believe he was off gambling as I lay dying. I mean, I know poker is hot and all, but couldn't he have waited a couple of days for that straight flush?"I got what I went for, if that's what you mean.""What, a lap dance?"He chuckes. "Even sick, you're still funny, Rayne.” - Mari Mancusi

105. “Is it really worth dying for the person you love?”[Maureen] thinks about this for a moment. “That’s not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, Can you live without her?” - Jodi Picoult

106. “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

107. “Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concernThat thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?For if thy life aforetime and behindTo thee was grateful, and not all thy goodWas heaped as in sieve to flow awayAnd perish unavailingly, why not,Even like a banqueter, depart the hall,Laden with life?” - Titus Lucretius Carus

108. “I don't want to be dying. I want to be dead.” - Lisa Cander

109. “We're always on breath away from something--living or dying--, sometimes it just can't be helped.” - Heather Gudenkauf

110. “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

111. “Rather than you smoking a cigarette, the cigarette is really smoking you.” - Anthony Liccione

112. “Convinced that we're living the whole time that we're dying.We decide to go out walking the whole time that you're talking.Convinced that you're living whole time that I'm dying.” - Tegan Quin

113. “You can call me Grandpa, if that does it for you.” - R.K. Lilley

114. “It’s not that we have to leave this life one day, it's how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime, drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers' glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, 'Soon' ... 'do you want me?' ... '...to lie enlaced' ... 'and sleep entwined' thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...?' Ô, Why!Why can’t we leave this life slowly?” - Roman Payne

115. “When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us.” - Lauren DeStefano

116. “A good death is a death in solidarity with others. To prepare ourselves for a good death, we must develop or deepen this sense of solidarity.” - Henri Nouwen

117. “Dying is beautiful- even the first time around, at the ripe old age of 20. It’s not easy most of the time, but there is real beauty to be found in knowing that your end is going to catch up with you faster than you had expected, and that you have to get all your loving and laughing and crying done as soon as you can.” - Norma Klein

118. “How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.” - Edward Thomas

119. “This is your war now.' I despised myself for the cheesy sentiment, but what else did I have?'Some war,' he said dismissively. 'What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Graze, with a predetermined winner.” - John Green

120. “depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” - John Green

121. “The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave up the strain of supporting his ruined bulk. He collapsed to the floor, his throat issuing a final sound like a bubbling casserole.” - R.D. Ronald

122. “Peter Van Houten was the only person I’d ever come across who seemed to (a) understand what it’slike to be dying, and (b) not have died.” - John Green

123. “I make a new discovery that totally blows; dying is the easy part. It's coming back to life that sucks.” - Karen Marie Moning

124. “It’s what happens when you shoot someone,” Wayne pointed out. “At least, usually someone has the good sense to get dead when you go to all the trouble to shoot them.” - Brandon Sanderson

125. “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

126. “Waking up in a room with no natural light does something to a man. no windows. I’m almost afraid to die. I fear my soul won’t make it out.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

127. “I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.” - Will Schwalbe

128. “Dying’s easy. It’s living that’s hard.” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

129. “You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead.” - zadie smith

130. “And as if he had read her thoughts, the old man murmured, 'What a blessing it is to die in your own bed, under your own roof, with your family surrounding you, full of the knowledge that you have lived as thoroughly as you wanted to.” - Anita Rau Badami

131. “Losing you're co-remember meant losing the memory itself.” - John Green

132. “With a sigh, he grabbed hold of his chair and lifted himself out of it, then wrote on the blackboard: How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? - A.Y.'I'm going to leave that up for the rest of the semester,' he said.'Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don't want us to forget Alaska, and I don't want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we're trying to understand how people have answered that question and the questions each of you posed in your papers--how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called 'people's rotten lots in life.” - John Green

133. “Apparently people commonly died when their loved ones were out of the room. Bathroom break. Quick trip down to the cafeteria for a grilled cheese. It was easier to die if you didn't have family members to worry about at that exact moment.Easier for the one who was dying, maybe.” - Naomi Shihab Nye

134. “It is not possible to express the most precious insights, To see all that craves to be seen, To visit even the closest neighbors in the universe, To learn all that needs to be learned, To live without dying, And I am sad about it.But I livedAnd I am happy about that.” - Dejan Stojanovic

135. “God didn’t design your life so you would constantly fall down, but he does hope that you will be brought to your knees.” - Shannon L. Alder

136. “The Society wants us to be afraid of dying. But I'm not. I'm only afraid of dying wrong.” - Ally Condie

137. “I dreamed of dying, long before my dreams have died.” - Anthony Liccione

138. “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