#i

She was beautiful and radiant. He remembered the concern in her eyes. The same concern drove her now, pushing her toward acts of violence. On the surface, he'd be a fool to turn her down. She was driven by tragedy, just like him, and she would be incorruptible, just like him. He needed a blade to kill, but she could kill dozens at once empty-handed. She was Death, and she had just asked to be his ally. ↗

— Ilona Andrews

#richard-mar #beauty

The salamanders, like tiny birds, locked into formation, fly down into the endless mysteries of the transforming water, and how could anyone believe that anything in this world is only what it appears to be— that anything is ever final— that anything, in spite of its absence, ever dies a perfect death? (from the poem 'What Is It?') ↗

— Mary Oliver

#death

The woman who later became his wife was sleeping in his bed, her face buried in the pillows and her feet crossed on top of each other like a child's. He watched her sleep and struggled to see her as she was, but what he saw instead were her muscles and bones. He saw right through the skin to where her femur connected to her tibia by way of the ligaments, to the hair web of nerves and the delicate forest of her lungs, to the abstract heart pumping blood through her arteries. It terrified him how easily these systems could fail her. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#death #life #death

You know it's desperate," she said. "Shane is going to the library. ↗

— Rachel Caine

#death

Who sleeps at night? No one is sleeping.
 In the cradle a child is screaming.
 An old man sits over his death, and anyone
 young enough talks to his love, breathes 
into her lips, looks into her eyes. ↗

— Marina Tsvetaeva

#death

And with a kiss I die ↗

— William Shakespeare

#love #romeo-and-juliet #death

My mother's death supervened, and this was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul. ↗

— Salvador Dalí

#family #love #pain #sadness #soul

When traveling in rural Africa, it's important to not actually *go* to a hospital until the patient is on the brink of expiration, otherwise things are apt to get worse. ↗

— Josh Gates

#death #hospital #traveling #death

People need to be peppered or even outraged occasionally. Our national comedy and drama is packed with earthy familiarity and honest vulgarity. Clean vulgarity can be very shocking and that, in my view, gives greater involvement. ↗

— Kenneth Williams

#comedy #drama #even #familiarity #gives

With riddles as black as coals, and answers as invisible as our past, I can only depend upon the crest of the rolling wave I now traversed; a romance worshiped only by the dreamer in us all, a psithurism of trust making its way through the years of our ascension to one day climb above the kaleidoscopic canopy of this mortal coil. ↗

— Dave Matthes

#fate #love #mortal-coil #mystery #rebirth