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QUOTES ABOUT DEATH

Death is one of the few experiences that unites every human life, yet it remains deeply personal and profoundly mysterious. Across cultures, generations, and beliefs, writers, philosophers, and artists have tried to capture its meaning in words. The following quotes explore death from many angles—grief and acceptance, fear and peace, endings and new beginnings.   ◀ Back
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It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.'
'Why are you saying that?'
'She might need permission to die, Cal.'
'I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.
- Jenny Downham
Before I Die
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The Vietnamese soldier said, “Before I spoke to her, I had given her a cooked ration of rice. Instead of her being grateful for the meal, she abused me! What gives with these Kampuchean People?”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)
- Michael G. Kramer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.
- C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.
- Haruki Murakami
Dance Dance Dance
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..
- Laurie Faria Stolarz
White Is for Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die.
- Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
I'm so sorry, Henri," I whisper in his ear. I close my eyes. "I love you. I wouldn't have missed a second of it, either. Not for anything," I whisper. "I'm going to take you back yet. Somehow I am going to get you back to Lorien. We always joked about it but you were my father, the best father I could have ever asked for. I'll never forget you, not for a minute for as long as I live. I love you, Henri. I always did.
- Pittacus Lore
I Am Number Four
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Um..." Hazel faltered. "You mean you won't... you're not going to-"
"Claim your life?" Thantos asked. "Well, let's see..."
He pulled a pure-black iPad from thin air. Death, tapped the screen a few times, and all Frank could think was: Please don't let there be an app for reaping souls.
"I don't see you on the list," Thantos said. "Pluto gives me specific orders for escaped souls, you see. For some reason, he has not issued a warrant for yours. Perhaps he feels your life is not finished, or it could be n oversight. If you'd like me to call and ask-"
"No!" Hazel yelped. "That's okay."
"Are you sure?" Death asked helpfully. "I have video-conferencing enabled. I have his Skype address here somewhere...
- Rick Riordan
The Son of Neptune
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Trust is a strange bedfellow.
- March Lions
The Last Sunset
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Outside, beyond the vast red bricked labyrinth of Kremlin walls, a humid night ensnarled the Soviet capital in its spell. Yet here in the womb-like private cinema Josef Stalin sat, eyes transfixed on the screen, as Johnny Weissmuller arced through a canopy of trees boldly screaming his signature jungle call.
- KGE Konkel
Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.
- Glen Cook
Soldiers Live
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
He is sorry-
For everything-
For Prentisstown-
For Viola-
For Ben-
For every failure and every wrong-
For letting his pa down-
And he's looking up at me-
And he's begging me-
He's begging me-
Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-
Like it's only me who's got the power-
Todd?-
Please-
And all I can say is "Davy-"
And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-
It's too much-
And then it stops.
Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.
And he lies there, still.
Davy Prentiss is dead.
- Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
- William Cullen Bryant
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Let the hounds give chase. I do not fear death, because I command it.
- Leigh Bardugo
Rule of Wolves
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Jon Snow, is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?”

“It is.” Jon took her hand.

“Good,” she whispered. “I wanted t’ see one proper castle, before … before I …”

“You’ll see hundred castles. The battle’s done. Maester Aemon will see to you. You’re kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we’ll get milk of the poppy for the pain.”

She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.”

“We’ll go back to the cave,” he said.” You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.”

“Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.
- George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Some fail to bear in mind that everyone is sentenced to death. Death is a treacherous virus that strikes randomly. The only truth is that nobody is going to make it out alive. We are all living on probation and our expiry date is indefinite. ( “Living on probation” )
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.
- Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
- Ally Condie
Reached
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
How unhappy does one have to be before living seems worse than dying?
- Deborah Curtis
Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!
- John Muir
My First Summer in the Sierra
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer.

[Essay entitled 'On Christianity', published posthumously]
- W.E.B. Du Bois
Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
- W. Somerset Maugham
The Razor’s Edge
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.'
'Why are you saying that?'
'She might need permission to die, Cal.'
'I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.
- Jenny Downham
Before I Die
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The Vietnamese soldier said, “Before I spoke to her, I had given her a cooked ration of rice. Instead of her being grateful for the meal, she abused me! What gives with these Kampuchean People?”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)
- Michael G. Kramer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.
- C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.
- Haruki Murakami
Dance Dance Dance
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..
- Laurie Faria Stolarz
White Is for Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die.
- Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
I'm so sorry, Henri," I whisper in his ear. I close my eyes. "I love you. I wouldn't have missed a second of it, either. Not for anything," I whisper. "I'm going to take you back yet. Somehow I am going to get you back to Lorien. We always joked about it but you were my father, the best father I could have ever asked for. I'll never forget you, not for a minute for as long as I live. I love you, Henri. I always did.
- Pittacus Lore
I Am Number Four
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Um..." Hazel faltered. "You mean you won't... you're not going to-"
"Claim your life?" Thantos asked. "Well, let's see..."
He pulled a pure-black iPad from thin air. Death, tapped the screen a few times, and all Frank could think was: Please don't let there be an app for reaping souls.
"I don't see you on the list," Thantos said. "Pluto gives me specific orders for escaped souls, you see. For some reason, he has not issued a warrant for yours. Perhaps he feels your life is not finished, or it could be n oversight. If you'd like me to call and ask-"
"No!" Hazel yelped. "That's okay."
"Are you sure?" Death asked helpfully. "I have video-conferencing enabled. I have his Skype address here somewhere...
- Rick Riordan
The Son of Neptune
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Trust is a strange bedfellow.
- March Lions
The Last Sunset
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Outside, beyond the vast red bricked labyrinth of Kremlin walls, a humid night ensnarled the Soviet capital in its spell. Yet here in the womb-like private cinema Josef Stalin sat, eyes transfixed on the screen, as Johnny Weissmuller arced through a canopy of trees boldly screaming his signature jungle call.
- KGE Konkel
Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.
- Glen Cook
Soldiers Live
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
He is sorry-
For everything-
For Prentisstown-
For Viola-
For Ben-
For every failure and every wrong-
For letting his pa down-
And he's looking up at me-
And he's begging me-
He's begging me-
Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-
Like it's only me who's got the power-
Todd?-
Please-
And all I can say is "Davy-"
And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-
It's too much-
And then it stops.
Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.
And he lies there, still.
Davy Prentiss is dead.
- Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
- William Cullen Bryant
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Let the hounds give chase. I do not fear death, because I command it.
- Leigh Bardugo
Rule of Wolves
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Jon Snow, is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?”

“It is.” Jon took her hand.

“Good,” she whispered. “I wanted t’ see one proper castle, before … before I …”

“You’ll see hundred castles. The battle’s done. Maester Aemon will see to you. You’re kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we’ll get milk of the poppy for the pain.”

She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.”

“We’ll go back to the cave,” he said.” You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.”

“Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.
- George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Some fail to bear in mind that everyone is sentenced to death. Death is a treacherous virus that strikes randomly. The only truth is that nobody is going to make it out alive. We are all living on probation and our expiry date is indefinite. ( “Living on probation” )
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.
- Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
- Ally Condie
Reached
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
How unhappy does one have to be before living seems worse than dying?
- Deborah Curtis
Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!
- John Muir
My First Summer in the Sierra
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer.

[Essay entitled 'On Christianity', published posthumously]
- W.E.B. Du Bois
Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
- W. Somerset Maugham
The Razor’s Edge
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.'
'Why are you saying that?'
'She might need permission to die, Cal.'
'I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.
- Jenny Downham
Before I Die
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The Vietnamese soldier said, “Before I spoke to her, I had given her a cooked ration of rice. Instead of her being grateful for the meal, she abused me! What gives with these Kampuchean People?”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)
- Michael G. Kramer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.
- C.S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.
- Haruki Murakami
Dance Dance Dance
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..
- Laurie Faria Stolarz
White Is for Magic
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Tell me, Doctor, are you afraid of death?"
"I guess it depends on how you die.
- Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
I'm so sorry, Henri," I whisper in his ear. I close my eyes. "I love you. I wouldn't have missed a second of it, either. Not for anything," I whisper. "I'm going to take you back yet. Somehow I am going to get you back to Lorien. We always joked about it but you were my father, the best father I could have ever asked for. I'll never forget you, not for a minute for as long as I live. I love you, Henri. I always did.
- Pittacus Lore
I Am Number Four
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Um..." Hazel faltered. "You mean you won't... you're not going to-"
"Claim your life?" Thantos asked. "Well, let's see..."
He pulled a pure-black iPad from thin air. Death, tapped the screen a few times, and all Frank could think was: Please don't let there be an app for reaping souls.
"I don't see you on the list," Thantos said. "Pluto gives me specific orders for escaped souls, you see. For some reason, he has not issued a warrant for yours. Perhaps he feels your life is not finished, or it could be n oversight. If you'd like me to call and ask-"
"No!" Hazel yelped. "That's okay."
"Are you sure?" Death asked helpfully. "I have video-conferencing enabled. I have his Skype address here somewhere...
- Rick Riordan
The Son of Neptune
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Trust is a strange bedfellow.
- March Lions
The Last Sunset
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Outside, beyond the vast red bricked labyrinth of Kremlin walls, a humid night ensnarled the Soviet capital in its spell. Yet here in the womb-like private cinema Josef Stalin sat, eyes transfixed on the screen, as Johnny Weissmuller arced through a canopy of trees boldly screaming his signature jungle call.
- KGE Konkel
Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Soldiers live. He dies and not you, and you feel guilty, because you're glad he died, and not you. Soldiers live, and wonder why.
- Glen Cook
Soldiers Live
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
He is sorry-
For everything-
For Prentisstown-
For Viola-
For Ben-
For every failure and every wrong-
For letting his pa down-
And he's looking up at me-
And he's begging me-
He's begging me-
Like I'm the only one who can forgive him-
Like it's only me who's got the power-
Todd?-
Please-
And all I can say is "Davy-"
And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-
It's too much-
And then it stops.
Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.
And he lies there, still.
Davy Prentiss is dead.
- Patrick Ness
The Ask and the Answer
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;
- William Cullen Bryant
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Let the hounds give chase. I do not fear death, because I command it.
- Leigh Bardugo
Rule of Wolves
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Jon Snow, is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?”

“It is.” Jon took her hand.

“Good,” she whispered. “I wanted t’ see one proper castle, before … before I …”

“You’ll see hundred castles. The battle’s done. Maester Aemon will see to you. You’re kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we’ll get milk of the poppy for the pain.”

She just smiled at that. “D’you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so.”

“We’ll go back to the cave,” he said.” You’re not going to die, Ygritte. You’re not.”

“Oh.” Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she sighed, dying.
- George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Some fail to bear in mind that everyone is sentenced to death. Death is a treacherous virus that strikes randomly. The only truth is that nobody is going to make it out alive. We are all living on probation and our expiry date is indefinite. ( “Living on probation” )
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.
- Vladimir Nabokov
Speak, Memory
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death, Life
Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Writing, painting, singing- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death’s footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
- Ally Condie
Reached
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
How unhappy does one have to be before living seems worse than dying?
- Deborah Curtis
Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!
- John Muir
My First Summer in the Sierra
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer.

[Essay entitled 'On Christianity', published posthumously]
- W.E.B. Du Bois
Writings: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade / The Souls of Black Folk / Dusk of Dawn / Essays and Articles
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead.
- W. Somerset Maugham
The Razor’s Edge
NOT YET RATING ▼
Topic: Death
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