#lit

Death wasn't a movie where the pretty star faded away with a touch of pale makeup and every hair in place. ↗

— Soheir Khashoggi

#death-of-a-loved-one #faces-of-death #reality-of-death #death

BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE RATHER STUPID AND WASTE THEIR LIVES. HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THAT? HAVE YOU NOT LOOKED DOWN FROM THE HORSE AT A CITY AND THOUGHT HOW MUCH IT RESEMBLED AN ANT HEAP, FULL OF BLIND CREATURES WHO THINK THEIR MUNDANE LITTLE WORLD WAS REAL? YOU SEE THE LIGHTED WINDOWS AND WHAT YOU WANT TO THINK IS THAT THERE MAY BE MANY INTERESTING STORIES BEHIND THEM, BUT WHAT YOU KNOW IS THAT REALLY THERE ARE JUST DULL, DULL SOULS, MERE CONSUMERS OF FOOD, WHO THINK THEIR INSTINCTS ARE EMOTIONS AND THEIR TINY LITTLE LIVES OF MORE ACCOUNT THAN A WHISPER OF WIND. The blue glow was bottmless. It seemed to be sucking her own thoughts out of her mind. 'No,' whispered Susan, 'no, I've never thought like that.' Death stood up abruptly and turned away. YOU MAY FIND OUT THAT IT HELPS, he said. ↗

— Terry Pratchett - Soul Music

#soul-music #susan-sto-helit #death

No, I don't die. When I set in your sky, I rise in another. Just because you can't see me, it doesn't mean I'm not there. ↗

— Rachel Rivett

#death

Spending moments with another in earnest presence is one of the simple ways we can show unconditional love. It is the memories created from these impressions that survive after all else passes. ↗

— Molly Friedenfeld

#hospice #love #memories #simple-love #spirituality

We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and then this lot begins afresh. Fresh and fresh! Perfectly simple. What's the trouble? ↗

— H.G. Wells

#life #mortality #death

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state. ↗

— Adam Michnik

#human-rights #politics #totalitarianism #freedom

The observations and encounters of a man of solitude and few words are at once more nebulous and more intense than those of a gregarious man, his thoughts more ponderable, more bizarre and never without a hint of sadness. Images and perceptions that might easily be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions occupy him unduly; they are heightened in the silence, gain in significance, turn into experience, adventure, emotion. Solitude begets originality, bold and disconcerting beauty, poetry. But solitude can also beget perversity, disparity, the absurd and the forbidden. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#solitude #beauty

Though I fly through the Valley of Death, I shall fear no evil, for I am at 80,000 feet and climbing. ↗

— Anonymous

#military #death

The use of drugs is not an effective means of facilitating real escape. It merely gives that erroneous and illusive impression. Well, illusive with an I and elusive with an E. At best, narcotics do no more than promote bonhomie and give you a temporary taste of what freedom might be like; and drugs take you into another sub-level of, or sub-culture in, the same old game. The same old game, but with additional consequences. And at worst, well ... suffice it to say that you really, really do not want to go there. ↗

— H.M. Forester

#escape #reality #freedom

Maybe the conference was an inversion layer of another kind, bringing me face-to-face with old friends and old places. With cancer and the Gap and the Old Man, railing about newfangled players and spicy food. Bringing me face-to-face early with death and old age and change. ↗

— Connie Willis

#death