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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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And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
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If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
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...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.
- Kevin Brockmeier
The View from the Seventh Layer
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The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.
- Tess Gerritsen
The Sinner
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She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
- William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
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Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.
- Kathy Acker
Pussy, King of the Pirates
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You're dead, and I'm the worst kind of alive.
- Adam Silvera
History Is All You Left Me
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.
- Angela Carter
The Lady of the House of Love
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Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.
- Richard Matheson
What Dreams May Come
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You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.
- Thomas Harris
Red Dragon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.
- Stephen Grosz
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Summer came.
For the book thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
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Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
- Catherynne M. Valente
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'
Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'
Something in my expression stops him.
'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'
Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece.
- Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay
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Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
- Michael Landon Jr.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.
- Criss Jami
Venus in Arms
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My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class—in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding—but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.
- Mohsin Hamid
Exit West
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I understand that the person who gets the Death-Cast call isn’t the only one dying. If you really hold someone in your heart, you die too.
- Adam Silvera
The First to Die at the End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death would hurt only for a moment, which was not so bad when one considered how much, and for how long, life hurt.
- Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is an inevitability, isn't it? You become more aware of that when you get to my age. I don't worry about it. I'm ready for it. When I go, I want to go doing what I do best. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't complain. It's been good.
- Lemmy Kilmister
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.
- Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are frightfully concerned with our own deaths, sometimes so much so that we forget the real purpose of our lives
- Brian L. Weiss
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.
- Kevin Brockmeier
The View from the Seventh Layer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.
- Tess Gerritsen
The Sinner
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
- William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.
- Kathy Acker
Pussy, King of the Pirates
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You're dead, and I'm the worst kind of alive.
- Adam Silvera
History Is All You Left Me
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.
- Angela Carter
The Lady of the House of Love
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.
- Richard Matheson
What Dreams May Come
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.
- Thomas Harris
Red Dragon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.
- Stephen Grosz
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Summer came.
For the book thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
- Catherynne M. Valente
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'
Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'
Something in my expression stops him.
'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'
Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece.
- Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
- Michael Landon Jr.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.
- Criss Jami
Venus in Arms
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class—in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding—but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.
- Mohsin Hamid
Exit West
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I understand that the person who gets the Death-Cast call isn’t the only one dying. If you really hold someone in your heart, you die too.
- Adam Silvera
The First to Die at the End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death would hurt only for a moment, which was not so bad when one considered how much, and for how long, life hurt.
- Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is an inevitability, isn't it? You become more aware of that when you get to my age. I don't worry about it. I'm ready for it. When I go, I want to go doing what I do best. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't complain. It's been good.
- Lemmy Kilmister
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.
- Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are frightfully concerned with our own deaths, sometimes so much so that we forget the real purpose of our lives
- Brian L. Weiss
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
...When you die, the energy that kept you alive filters into the people you loved. Did you know that? It's like a fire you've tended all your life, and the sparks are all scattered into the wind.... That's why we survive as long as we do, because the people who loved us keep us going.
- Kevin Brockmeier
The View from the Seventh Layer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.
- Tess Gerritsen
The Sinner
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
- William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.
- Kathy Acker
Pussy, King of the Pirates
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You're dead, and I'm the worst kind of alive.
- Adam Silvera
History Is All You Left Me
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.
- Angela Carter
The Lady of the House of Love
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.
- Richard Matheson
What Dreams May Come
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.
- Thomas Harris
Red Dragon
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Closure is just as delusive-it is the false hope that we can deaden our living grief.
- Stephen Grosz
The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Summer came.
For the book thief, everything was going nicely.
For me, the sky was the color of Jews.

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.
- Markus Zusak
The Book Thief
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
- Catherynne M. Valente
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'
Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'
Something in my expression stops him.
'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'
Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece.
- Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.
- Michael Landon Jr.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.
- Criss Jami
Venus in Arms
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.
- Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It might seem odd that in cities teetering at the edge of the abyss young people still go to class—in this case an evening class on corporate identity and product branding—but that is the way of things, with cities as with life, for one moment we are pottering about our errands as usual and the next we are dying, and our eternally impending ending does not put a stop to our transient beginnings and middles until the instant when it does.
- Mohsin Hamid
Exit West
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I understand that the person who gets the Death-Cast call isn’t the only one dying. If you really hold someone in your heart, you die too.
- Adam Silvera
The First to Die at the End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death would hurt only for a moment, which was not so bad when one considered how much, and for how long, life hurt.
- Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sympathizer
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Death is an inevitability, isn't it? You become more aware of that when you get to my age. I don't worry about it. I'm ready for it. When I go, I want to go doing what I do best. If I died tomorrow, I couldn't complain. It's been good.
- Lemmy Kilmister
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive.
- Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We are frightfully concerned with our own deaths, sometimes so much so that we forget the real purpose of our lives
- Brian L. Weiss
Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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62
63
64
65
66
...