Died Quotes - Page 12

• What can you say about a twenty-five year old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. The Beatles. And me.

  Erich Segal

  Beautiful, Girl, Years

  Love Story ch. 1 (1970)

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• The twentieth century ended with its dreams in ruins. The notion of the community as a voluntary association of enlightened citizens has died forever. We realize how suffocatingly humane we've become, dedicated to moderation and the middle way. The suburbanization of the soul has overrun our planet like the plague.

  J. G. Ballard

  Dream, Community, Forever

  J. G. Ballard (2010). “Super-Cannes: A Novel”, p.269, Macmillan

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• I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Dream, Morning, Heart

  Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.41, Grove Press

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• And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.

  James Clavell

  Kings, Luck, Together

  JAMES CLAVELL (1962). “KING RAT”

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• The pain was so deep and so raw. There were days I would have died just to forget. The problem was, I couldn't figure out how to get her out of my mind. How do you kill that kind of pain?

  Ted Dekker

  Pain, Mind, Kind

  Ted Dekker (2010). “Dekker 4-in-1 Bundle: Black, Showdown, Heaven's Wager & Kiss”, p.932, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.

  Mary Ann Shaffer

  War, Condolences, Son

  Annie Barrows, Mary Ann Shaffer (2011). “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel”, p.101, Dial Press

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• For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds of the air. We are going to put it down ― the evolution of this world which has died but which has not been buried.

  Henry Miller

  Crazy, Men, Our World

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

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• In places where a loved one has died, time stops for eternity. If I stand on the very spot, one says to oneself, like a prayer, might I feel the pain he felt? They say that on a visit to an old castle or whatever, the history of the place, the presence of people who walked there many years ago, can be felt in the body. Before, when I heard things like that, I would think, what are they talking about? But i felt I understood it now.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Prayer, Pain, Thinking

  Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.124, Grove Press

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• ...she waited until she and my grandfather Anthel were just home from their honeymoon, and then sat him down and told him this: "Honey, I know you like to take a drink, and that's all right, but be forewarned that I ain't your maid and I ain't your punching bag, and if you ever raise your hand to me you'd best kill me. Because otherwise I'll wait until you're asleep; sew you into the bed; and beat you to death with a frying pan." Until he died, I am told, my grandfather was a gentle man.

  Haven Kimmel

  Home, Men, Hands

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• What should have died along with communism is the belief that modern societies can be run on a single principle, whether that of planning under the general will or that of free-market allocations.

  Charles Taylor

  Running, Should Have, Principles

  Charles Taylor (1992). “The Ethics of Authenticity”, p.110, Harvard University Press

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• In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame... She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked an unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Summer, Real, Night

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• Your aunt and uncle will be proud, though, won't they?" said Hermione as they got off the train and joined the crowd thronging toward the enchanted barrier. "When they hear what you did this year?" "Proud?" said Harry. "Are you crazy? All those times I could've died, and I didn't manage it? They'll be furious.

  J. K. Rowling

  Uncles, Crazy, Aunt

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• How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

  Graham Greene

  Beautiful, Children, Home

  Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• Two years ago your father died, Ulysses. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us.

  William Saroyan

  Father, Years, Two

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• All of the sudden," he said, "I feel different-- not like I ever felt before. Even when Papa died I didn't feel this way. In two days everything is changed. I'm lonely and I don't now what I'm lonely for

  William Saroyan

  Lonely, Two, Papa

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• Damien has died and gone straight to gay boy heaven,' Shaunee said.

  P. C. Cast

  Gay, Boys, Heaven

  P. C. Cast, Kristin Cast (2013). “House of Night Series”, p.312, Macmillan

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• But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. 'This Man Died from Living Too Much'.

  Ian Fleming

  Father, Tombstone, Heart

  Ian Fleming (1961). “gilt-edged bonds”

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• And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.

  John Steinbeck

  Prayer, Men, Past

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.29, Hamilton Books

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• Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.

  Jane Yolen

  Memories, Numbers, People

  Jane Yolen (1990). “The Devil's Arithmetic”, p.100, Penguin

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• Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: brought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every morning, shaved his face until the hair stopped growing, took him faithfully to bed with her every night, whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left him everything in her will, thought of only him as she died, always knew he was fiction but believed in him anyway.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Sweet, Morning, Coffee

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• Suddenly Yankel was overcome with a fear of dying, stronger than he felt when his parents passed of natural causes, stronger than when his only brother was killed in the flour mill or when his children died, stronger even than when he was a child and it first occurred to him that he must try to understand what it could mean not to be alive -- to be not in darkness, not in unfeeling -- to be not being, not to be.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Brother, Children, Mean

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2003). “Everything is Illuminated”, p.50, Penguin UK

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• THE DEATH OF LEOPOLD GURSKY Leopold Gursky started dying on August 18, 1920. He died learning to walk. He died standing at the blackboard. And once, also, carrying a heavy tray. He died practicing a new way to sign his name. Opening a window. Washing his genitals in the bath. He died alone, because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone. Or he died thinking about Alma. Or when he chose not to.

  Nicole Krauss

  Thinking, Names, Phones

  Nicole Krauss (2006). “The History of Love: A Novel”, p.255, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Mother, Yesterday

  Albert Camus (2016). “The Stranger”, p.2, Hamilton Books

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• She died--this was the way she died; And when her breath was done, Took up her simple wardrobe And started for the sun. Her little figure at the gate The angels must have spied, Since I could never find her Upon the mortal side.

  Emily Dickinson

  Angel, Simple, Done

  Emily Dickinson (2016). “The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.204, First Avenue Editions

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• You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.

  Nick Cave

  Book, Fall, Hands

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