Quotes Tagged "death"

الخلودَ حِليَةُ من يعي لا من يتكاثر

Camels can go many weeks without drinking anything at all. The notion that they cache water in their humps is pure myth—their humps are made of fat, and water is stored in their body tissues. While other mammals draw water from bloodstreams when faced with dehydration, leading to death by volume shock, camels tap the water in their tissues, keeping their blood volume stable. Though this reduces the camel’s bulk, they can lose up to a third of their body weight with no ill effects, which they can replace astonishingly quickly, as they are able to drink up to forty gallons in a single watering.” (pp.69-70)

Death is the force that will create your new life. It is a mechanism of transformation. Welcome it.

A few weeks ago I had a dream. I dreamed I was back at the house, in the red room, reading my microeconomics textbook. Maddy outside playing with Hope, and Agnes was preparing dinner. It was just like old times. I was elated. I knew all along that they weren't really dead. It was all just a terrible mistake. Maddy joined me in the library. Strangely, she didn't smell like anything. Not her usual crème brulee or green apples or candy. That's when I realized she was dead, though I didn't know I was dreaming. She apologized for everything and then proceeded to explain why things had turned out the way they had. Her story made complete sense. It was what I needed to hear. Finally I had an answer. Finally I could let go. And then she vanished When I woke up, in a pool of sweat, I couldn't remember a thing Maddy had said.

For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.

You are going to end up as one of those sad old men who poke around in rubbish bins.” “I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground... And so are you. So are we all.

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.

Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.

The reaper does not listen to the harvest.

Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

La vida es mi tortura y la muerte será mi descanso.

…She kissed me on my thin lips and all my words were pushed back into my mouth. “I don’t want to die,” she whispered, “but I need to lose the shackles of this multitude of hearts.

WHAT FOR IS THIS BOX PADDED? IS IT TO BE SAT ON? CAN IT BE THAT IT IS CAT-FLAVOURED?

Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't.

The young open the paper to forget about life by reading the funny strips. The old do it to forget about death by reading other people's obits. My advice: don't open the paper and go on with your life.

And often the worst thing wasn't the victims--they were dead, after all, and beyond any more pain. The worst thing was those who loved them and survived them. Often the walking dead from now on, shell-shocked, hearts ruptured, stumbling through the remainder of their lives without anything left inside of them but blood and organs, impervious to pain, having learned nothing except that the worst things did, in fact, sometimes happen. (Mystic River)

That's it then. This is how it ends. I haven't even read Proust.

Nobody is ready for death. If you ask Joe Blow on the street, he aint gonna tell you he thinks he'll live forever. But when the end is near you'll realize you've been believing that all along. It's like getting caught with your pants down. That's why you gotta live, little one. Yeah stop and smell them roses.