86 Deadly Quotes

Are you ready to delve into the mind-blowing world of powerful and provocative quotes? Our curated collection of the top 86 deadly quotes spans a variety of themes, ranging from the depths of human emotion to the pinnacle of intellectual thought. Each quote has been handpicked for its intensity, profundity, and ability to spark deep introspection. Whether you’re looking for inspiration, motivation, or simply a new perspective, these quotes are sure to leave a lasting impression. Prepare yourself for a journey through words that cut to the core and resonate with the human spirit.

1. “Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls “the National Geographic.” She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn’t take it with him when he left her. She said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.” I said, “But I was negative-thirty years old.” She said, “Still.” Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!” - Jonathan Safran Foer

2. “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” - Mother Jones

3. “All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one...” - Stephen King

4. “You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?” - J.K. Rowling

5. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” - Plato

6. “The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.” - Czesław Miłosz

7. “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” - N.H. Kleinbaum

8. “O may I join the choir invisibleOf those immortal dead who live againIn minds made better by their presence; liveIn pulses stirred to generosity,In deeds of daring rectitude...” - George Eliot

9. “Denn die Todten reiten Schnell. (For the dead travel fast.)” - Bram Stoker

10. “You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.” - Barbara Kingsolver

11. “To them I'm simply an object from the past that they wish will disappear Then why do I exist? Why am I alive? When I thought about this I could find no answer. But as you live you need a reason otherwise it's the same as being dead, I then came to this conclusion I exist to kill every human besides myself. Fighting only for yourself living while only loving yourself If you think that everybody else simply exist to allow you to experience that feeling nothing is better then that world. As long as there are people in this world for me to kill and continue to feel that joy of living my existence will not vanish.” - Masashi Kishimoto

12. “The dead are often known to eat 27 and 53” - David Almond

13. “When the dead departed, they took away any falsehoods that they might have allowed us to believe while alive; we who are left behind have to embark on a different life, since the dead are no longer here to help us deceive ourselves.” - Yiyun Li

14. “There is nothing so actively alive as the dead.” - Jessie Douglas Kerruish

15. “Clearly the Old One had the capacity to kill - or easily deliver some sort of final ending that sounded remarkably like death.” - Garth Nix

16. “But suppose the endlessly dead were to wake in us some emblem:they might point to the catkins hangingfrom the empty hazel trees, or direct us to the raindescending on black earth in early spring. ---And we, who always think of happinessrising, would feel the emotionthat almost baffles uswhen a happy thing falls.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

17. “For if we're destroyed, the knowledge is dead...We're nothing more than dust jackets for books...so many pages to a person...” - Ray Bradbury

18. “There is only one way to fight, and that's dirty. Clean gentlemanly fighting will get you nowhere but dead, and fast. Take every cheap shot, every low blow, absolutely kick people when they're down, and maybe you'll be the one who walks away.” - Jeaniene Frost

19. “None of the dead come back. But some stay.” - St. John the Divine

20. “when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.” - William S. Burroughs

21. “I got a shotgun and a backhoe and no one looks under a septic tank for a dead body. (Bubba)” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

22. “Anger as soon as fed is dead- 'Tis starving makes it fat. ” - Emily Dickinson

23. “There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain. ” - Jeanette Winterson

24. “Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.” - Wilfred Owen

25. “One dead body required two men either to bury it or to transport it to the rear. A wounded soldier, on the other hand, immobilized five men for an indeterminate amount of time; and who knew whether it was even worth the effort.” - STEPHANE AUDEGUY

26. “That settles it, no more books about vampire before bedtime.” - Amanda Ashley

27. “With characteristic lack of false modesty, John once said to me, "My looks are a rough test of people. If they don't begin to see me beautiful when they have had a chance to learn, I know they're dead inside, and dangerous.” - Olaf Stapledon

28. “You don't think I'm going to deflower you under your father's roof, do you?” - Amanda Ashley

29. “The old world told men merely about to live and to die.Today men think about defeating death and resurrection.” - Toba Beta

30. “The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love.” - John Fowles

31. “You gotta take chances in this life or you're alreadydead.” - Megan McCafferty

32. “as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.” - Anne Rice

33. “Sometimes dead is better” - Stephen King

34. “Before Elijah could raise a nation from the dead, he raised just one dead child.” - Lou Engle

35. “The idea began to sink in, more than it ever had, that I might be crazy, in the traditional sense of the word. That I might be, forever and ever amen, a Crazy Person. That's what we'd suspected all along, what I'd been working so hard to disprove, what might be true. I preferred, by far, being dead.” - Marya Hornbacher

36. “Sometimes I wait at the bottom of those dark stairs, I sit at the bottom of the stairs, I wait beyond the bottom of the stairs and listen to the sounds my wife and children make as they sleep, the sounds our animals make as they step carefully through our dreams and out the other side to polished floor and cold window. Sometimes I wait so long I become unsure if I am asleep, or awake, or dead.” - Steve Rasnic Tem

37. “But my gloom did not lessen. I knew that I'd had a bad dream, and I stood in the dark trying to recollect it. The second I closed my eyes, I was with the dead. They did things words cannot express. They spoke madness. ("Hanka")” - Isaac Bashevis Singer

38. “Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.” - Bill Bryson

39. “The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.” - Tess Gerritsen

40. “Một người này có thể sống trong ký ức của một người kia, không chỉ hình ảnh mà cả tiếng nói lẫn thái độ.Bạn đã bao giờ bắt gặp những cuộc trò chuyện trong tâm tưởng chưa? Trong nhiều trường hợp, những cuộc trò chuyện như vậy lại sống động hơn và chân thật hơn khi đối mặt ngoài đời.Có thể bạn không tin những điều tôi nói nhưng nếu bạn biết rằng trong vương quốc của tâm tưởng, nơi con người ta không cần phải vót nhọt thái độ theo hoàn cảnh, không cần phải thu xếp lời ăn tiếng nói để sự thẳng thắn khỏi bị đánh lưới thì bờ cõi của sự chân thật được mở rộng đến vô biên và mỗi ý kiến cá nhân đều có một ngai vàng tráng lệ của riêng mình.” - Nguyễn Nhật Ánh

41. “Free, I think. They're free.(is this why she joined them?)I feel so-So relieved.I pick up the pace as I near the opening, my hands gripping my rifle but I have a feeling I ain't gonna need it.(ah, Viola, I knew I could count-)Then I reach the opening and stop.Everything stops.My stomach falls right thru my feet."They're all gone?" Davy says, coming up beside me.Then he see what I see."What the-?" Davy says.The Spackle ain't all gone.They're still here.Every single one.All 1150 of them.Dead.” - Patrick Ness

42. “He is sorry-For everything-For Prentisstown-For Viola-For Ben-For every failure and every wrong-For letting his pa down-And he's looking up at me-And he's begging me-He's begging me-Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-Like it's only me who's got the power-Todd?-Please-And all I can say is "Davy-"And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-It's too much-And then it stops.Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.And he lies there, still.Davy Prentiss is dead.” - Patrick Ness

43. “I drag the body out into the snowdrifts, as far away from our shack as I can muster. I put her in a thicket of trees, where the green seems to still have a voice in the branches, and try not to think about the beasts that’ll soon be gathering. There’s no way of burying her; the ground is a solid rock of ice beneath us. I kneel beside her and want desperately to weep. My throat tightens and my head aches. Everything hurts inside. But I have no way of releasing it. I’m locked up and hard as stone.“I’m sorry, Mamma,” I whisper to the shell in front of me. I take her hand. It could belong to a glass doll. There’s no life there anymore. So I gather rocks, one by one, and set them over her, trying my best to protect her from the birds, the beasts, keep her safe as much as I can now. I pile the dark stones gently on her stomach, her arms, and over her face, until she becomes one with the mountain. I stand and study my work, feeling like the rocks are on me instead, then I leave the body for the forest and ice.” - Rachel A. Marks

44. “He just summoned the dead with coke and cheeseburgers” - Rick Riordan

45. “With horror he perceived that, by uniting himself as he had with the dead, he had cut himself off from the living. Stripped of all earthly hope, bereft of every consolation, he was rendered as poor as mortal can possiblybe on this side of the grave.” - Ludwig Tieck

46. “In tombs of gold and lapis lazuliBodies of holy men and women exudeMiraculous oil, odour of violet.But under heavy loads of trampled clayLie bodies of the vampires full of blood;Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet("Oil and Blood")” - W.B. Yeats

47. “By then she was dead. In fact, she may have been dead a while ago. Physically, several seconds ago, mentally, ages ago.” - Koushun Takami

48. “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

49. “The dead think they can get away with anything because you'll feel sorry for them. If you play cards with the dead, make sure you deal and don't let them buy you drinks. They'll slip you a formaldehyde roofie and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth.” - Richard Kadrey

50. “I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end.Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead.The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat."No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does.” - Suzanne Collins

51. “Granny looked up at the zombie. He was - or, technically, had been - a tall, handsome man. He still was, only now he looked like someone who had walked through a room full of cobwebs.'What's your name, dead man?' she said.” - Terry Pratchett

52. “Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.”She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.” - Melina Marchetta

53. “But maybe that's what the dead do. They stay. They linger. Benign and sweet and painful. They don't need us. They echo all by themselves.” - Sangu Mandanna

54. “There was something dead in my heart.I tried to figure out what it was by the strength of the smell. I knew that it was not a lion or a sheep or a dog. Using logical deduction, I came to the conclusion that it was a mouse.I had a dead mouse in my heart.” - Richard Brautigan

55. “I sit alone in a dead world. The wind blows hot and dry, and the dust gathers like particles of memory waiting to be swept away. I pray for forgetfulness, yet my memory remains strong, as does the outstretched arm of the oppressive air. It seems as if the wind has been there since the beginning of the nightmare. Sometimes loud and harsh, a thousand sharp needles scratching at my reddened skin. Sometimes a whisper, a curious sigh in the black of night, of words more frightening than pain. I know now the wind has been speaking to me. Only I couldn't understand because I was too scared. I am scared now as I write these words. Still, there is nothing else to do.” - Christopher Pike

56. “Of course I want to kill you," said Skulduggery. "I want to kill most people. But then where would I be? In a field of dead people with no one to talk to.” - Derek Landy

57. “Meanwhile, we have carved out a place for ourselves among the dead; the glittering pinnacles of commerce rise along the skyline, their foundations sunk in a charnel house; and the lost lie forgotten below us as, overhead, we persaude ourselves that we are immortal and carry on the business of life.” - Catharine Arnold

58. “The faithful clamoured to be buried alongside the martyrs, as close as possible to the venerable remains, a custom which, in anthropological terms, recalls Neolithic beliefs that certain human remains possessed supernatural properties. It was believed that canonized saints did not rot, like lesser mortals, but that their corpses were miraculously preserved and emanated an odour of sanctity, a sweet, floral smell, for years after death. In forensic terms, such preservation is likely to be a result of natural mummification in hot, dry conditions.” - Catharine Arnold

59. “It is a subliminal thing. It is the tick of a clock that has ticked so long one no longer notices. Something is in a room when a man lives in it. Something is not in the room when a man is dead in it.” - Ray Bradbury

60. “Madoka: Won't anyone notice that Mami-san is dead?Homura: Mami Tomoe's only relatives are distant relations. It will be quite some time before anyone files a missing persons report. When one dies on that side of the wards, not even a body is left behind. She'll wind up forever a "missing person"... That is what happens to magical girls in the end.Madoka: ...That's too cruel! Mami-san has been fighting all alone for a long time for everyone's sake! For no one to even notice that she's gone... That's just too lonely a fate...Homura: It is just that kind of contract that gives us the power in the first place. It isn't for anyone else's sake. We fight on for the sake of our own prayer. So for no one to notice... for the world to forget us... That is just something we have to accept.” - Magica Quartet

61. “Whatever she is now she's better than she was," said Bedloe. "Being dead is better than being dull, being dead is better than not being aware.” - Ray Bradbury

62. “How came she by her death? How came she there? Was she slain by accident, or had she met with violence? were the questions that pressed upon our thoughts. But we said little then and after a time left her where we found her. It mattered not to her that the bed was hard or the air cold.("A Night In An Old Castle")” - George Payne Rainsford James

63. “[...]It is as if after surviving so much, there was no longer reason to survive.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

64. “Thank you, Dr. Phil, for that fine psychological assessment," I snapped and motioned my chin to Disco. "Why don't you and Oprah here go take a long walk off a short plank and do the world a favor?” - J.A. Saare

65. “Orphan could no longer hear or see the shadows of the dead. He didn't think they had perished. Most likely they were hiding now, somewhere in this landscape of books.” - Lavie Tidhar

66. “The dead can be even more frustrating to deal with than are many of the living, which is astonishing when you consider it's the living who run the Department of Motor Vehicles.” - Dean Koontz

67. “Dead or alive, true leaders can inspire an entire army.” - Peter Mohrbacher

68. “Neither alive nor dead; No one lets up, No one wins.” - Dejan Stojanovic

69. “How quickly the dead faded into each other,” - Ian McEwan

70. “He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not here to start trouble. I am just doing some research for my thesis.”“If you don’t get out of this bar, you are going to be writing your thesis via Ouija board.” - Jessica Fortunato

71. “Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage—but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afraid. To love life is, of course, a wonderful thing, but not on this day of all days.” - Paul Hoffman

72. “... If the dead can come back to this earth and move unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or if the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.” - Paul Hoffman

73. “The dead don't stay dead in this town! Haunted Richmond II-Pamela K. Kinney” - Pamela K. Kinney

74. “The death of loved ones often awakens the death inside of us.” - Sandra Chami Kassis

75. “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.” - William Lloyd Garrison

76. “Streets teemed with hell's wretched souls. New dead with their gadgets and old dead from antiquity. Demons roamed the avenues and alleyways, tormenting hapless damned at random with branding irons, flaming pitchforks, and razor-wire whips. -From the story Remember, Remember, Hell in November, in the anthology, Lawyers in Hell.” - Larry Atchley Jr.

77. “One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead.” - H.G. Wells

78. “When I got home, I seemed in a dream. My windows looked upon hers; I remained all the day looking at them, and all the day they were closed and dark. I forgot everything for this woman; I slept not, I eat nothing. That evening I fell into a fever, the next morning I was delirious, and the next evening I was DEAD!' 'Dead!' cried his hearers. 'Dead!' answered the narrator, with a conviction in his voice which words alone cannot give; 'dead as Fabian, the cast of whose dead face hangs from that wall!' 'Go on,' whispered the others, holding their breath. The hail still rattled against the windows, and the fire had so nearly died out, that they threw more wood on the feeble flame which penetrated the darkness of the studio and cast a faint light upon the pale face of him who told the story. ("The Dead Man's Story” - Hain Friswell

79. “The difference between the one who remembers Allah and the one who doesn’t is like the living and the dead.” - Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf

80. “Como si fuera más digno morirse de leucemia que de SIDA. Como si fuera indigno ser sidoso. Como si en la muerte hubiera alguna dignidad” - Antonio Santa Ana

81. “Most people say about graveyards: "Oh, it's just a bunch of dead people. It's creepy." But for me, there's an energy to it that it not creepy, or dark. It has a positive sense to it.” - Tim Burton

82. “Better off dead than giving in; not taking what you want.” - Carol Ann Duffy

83. “Saige, Mother is . . .” I briefly close my eyes and swallow, clearing my mouth from saliva. “Mother is dead.” - Jada Berglund

84. “(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will?(ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend.IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.” - Sheri S. Tepper

85. “HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you men kill us and are honored for it, or we women kill you and are damned for it. Dead or damned. Women don't have to make choices like that in Hades. There is no love there, nothing to betray.” - Sheri S. Tepper

86. “Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.” - Margaret Atwood