#death

One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#sorrow #death

He really had experienced every tiniest increment of time in the four decades since then, and yet here he was surprised to be suddenly old and crippled. Turned out the rope didn't care if you noticed every daisy on the path to the gallows. ↗

— Chris Cleave

#death #life #melancholy #old #time

An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know. All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . . ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#subjectivity #women #death

There was a brief silence in which the distant echo of Hagrid smashing down a wooden front door seemed to reverberate through the intervening years. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#death

Here is a list of terrible things, The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings The rabid bite of the dogs of war, The voice of one who went before, But most of all the mirror's gaze, Which counts us out our numbered days. ↗

— Clive Barker

#fantasy #fear #horror #poem #scary

I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#earth #science #death

Here she is,” her mum said, cooing at the baby, “my special girl.” “Oh, cheers,” Valkyrie said, rolling her eyes. ↗

— Derek Landy

#sarcasm #special #death

If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#love #zombies #death

The rain battered the cottage. Valkyrie risked a look up at Skulduggery. “What is it?” she whispered. “It’s a box,” he whispered back. “What kind of box?” “A wooden one.” She gave him a look. ↗

— Derek Landy

#death-bringer #skulduggery-pleasant #valkyrie-cain #death

I think so,' said Professor McGonagall dryly, 'we teachers are rather good at magic, you know. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#minerva-mcgonagall #death