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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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Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.

'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.
- Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party and Other Stories
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When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me.
- Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
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When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf
to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there.
There's nothing so spiritual about being happy
but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.
- Frank O'Hara
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is easy when you've already tried to find it.
- Pierce Brown
Red Rising
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.
- Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
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Maybe the only good thing about death is that you never have to relive it. You never have to remember the pain.
- Pittacus Lore
The Fallen Legacies
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If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.
- Catherine Fisher (Incarceron)
Incarceron
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.
- Benjamin J. Carey
Barefoot in November
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The world was becoming a very puzzling place for me. I didn’t understand why bad people were allowed to tell good people what to do. What kind of world would allow that to happen?  
- Steven Decker
Child of Another Kind
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.)
- Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ageing is nothing to be ashamed of
Especially when the entire race is in it together
Although sometimes it seems that she alone among her friends wants to celebrate getting older
Because it’s such a privilege to not die prematurely
- Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
As human beings, we're born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.
- Shaun David Hutchinson
We Are the Ants
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Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
As you may expect, someone has died.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood.
- Clarice Lispector
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No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
- Pablo Neruda
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.
- Arthur Golden
Memoirs of a Geisha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.

She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double.
- Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.
- Frida Kahlo
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
- John Milton
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no remedy for death—or birth—except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.
- Jim Crace
Being Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now I’m not blaming anything on her—I take full responsibility for my own actions— but it was Annette’s betrayal that began my slow spin downward to insanity.  
- Steven Decker
Addicted to Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death was for-the other people.
- Agatha Christie
And Then There Were None
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.

'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.
- Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party and Other Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me.
- Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf
to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there.
There's nothing so spiritual about being happy
but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.
- Frank O'Hara
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is easy when you've already tried to find it.
- Pierce Brown
Red Rising
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.
- Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe the only good thing about death is that you never have to relive it. You never have to remember the pain.
- Pittacus Lore
The Fallen Legacies
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.
- Catherine Fisher (Incarceron)
Incarceron
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.
- Benjamin J. Carey
Barefoot in November
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The world was becoming a very puzzling place for me. I didn’t understand why bad people were allowed to tell good people what to do. What kind of world would allow that to happen?  
- Steven Decker
Child of Another Kind
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.)
- Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ageing is nothing to be ashamed of
Especially when the entire race is in it together
Although sometimes it seems that she alone among her friends wants to celebrate getting older
Because it’s such a privilege to not die prematurely
- Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
As human beings, we're born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.
- Shaun David Hutchinson
We Are the Ants
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
As you may expect, someone has died.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood.
- Clarice Lispector
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
- Pablo Neruda
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.
- Arthur Golden
Memoirs of a Geisha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.

She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double.
- Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.
- Frida Kahlo
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
- John Milton
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no remedy for death—or birth—except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.
- Jim Crace
Being Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now I’m not blaming anything on her—I take full responsibility for my own actions— but it was Annette’s betrayal that began my slow spin downward to insanity.  
- Steven Decker
Addicted to Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death was for-the other people.
- Agatha Christie
And Then There Were None
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.

'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.
- Katherine Mansfield
The Garden Party and Other Stories
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me.
- Stephen Crane
The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
When I die, don't come, I wouldn't want a leaf
to turn away from the sun -- it loves it there.
There's nothing so spiritual about being happy
but you can't miss a day of it, because it doesn't last.
- Frank O'Hara
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is easy when you've already tried to find it.
- Pierce Brown
Red Rising
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.
- Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Maybe the only good thing about death is that you never have to relive it. You never have to remember the pain.
- Pittacus Lore
The Fallen Legacies
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.
- Catherine Fisher (Incarceron)
Incarceron
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.
- Benjamin J. Carey
Barefoot in November
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The world was becoming a very puzzling place for me. I didn’t understand why bad people were allowed to tell good people what to do. What kind of world would allow that to happen?  
- Steven Decker
Child of Another Kind
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.)
- Gail Honeyman
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Ageing is nothing to be ashamed of
Especially when the entire race is in it together
Although sometimes it seems that she alone among her friends wants to celebrate getting older
Because it’s such a privilege to not die prematurely
- Bernardine Evaristo
Girl, Woman, Other
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
As human beings, we're born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.
- Shaun David Hutchinson
We Are the Ants
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
As you may expect, someone has died.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood.
- Clarice Lispector
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he’d keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
- Pablo Neruda
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.
- John Green
Looking for Alaska
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I began to feel that all the people I'd ever known who had died or left me had not in fact gone away, but continued to live on inside me just as this man's wife lived on inside him.
- Arthur Golden
Memoirs of a Geisha
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.

She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double.
- Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.
- Frida Kahlo
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
- John Milton
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no remedy for death—or birth—except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall.
- Jim Crace
Being Dead
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Now I’m not blaming anything on her—I take full responsibility for my own actions— but it was Annette’s betrayal that began my slow spin downward to insanity.  
- Steven Decker
Addicted to Time
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death was for-the other people.
- Agatha Christie
And Then There Were None
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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15
16
17
18
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