#eat

But you, Achilles,/ There is not a man in the world more blest than you--/ There never has been, never will be one./ Time was, when you were alive, we Argives/ honored you as a god, and now down here, I see/ You Lord it over the dead in all your power./ So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.’ I reassured the ghost, but he broke out protesting,/ ‘No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!/ By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man--/ Some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead. ↗

— Homer

#the-odyssey #death

Do you know how wizards like to be buried?" "Yes!" "Well, how?" Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs. "Reluctantly. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#humor #wizards #death

And you? Did you find the doorknob?” Hadrian picked up a jug and downed several swallows, drinking so quickly some of the water dripped down his chin. He poured some in his palm and rinsed his face, running his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t even get close enough to see a door.” “Well, look on the bright side”—Hadrian smiled—“at least you weren’t captured and condemned to death this time.” “That’s the bright side?” “What can I say? I’m a glass-half-full kinda guy. ↗

— Michael J. Sullivan

#death

And like that, I said goodbye to my grandmother like we were two people who met in a coffee shop, shared a lifetime of stories and left wanting more, but knowing we’d meet there again. ↗

— Darnell Lamont Walker

#family #grandmother #sorrow #death

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#fiction #marlow #death

[Australia] is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the largest monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now-official, more respectful Aboriginal name). It has more things that will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick, and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. ... If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#death

Here is a small fact. You are going to die. ↗

— Mark Zusak

#death

For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad. ↗

— Christina Rossetti

#hope #death

I edit my own stories to death. They eventually run and hide from me. ↗

— Jeanne Voelker

#writing #death

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;/ We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death ↗

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

#heathen #pagan #death