By Category: Death

“Life dries cold beneath the dead soul lights
When death sleeps, it dreams of you.”

-Dead Girl, Acid Bath

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“I had always heard that your entire life flashes before your eyes the second before you die. Only that one second isn't a second at all, it seems to stretch out forever like an ocean of time. For me it was lying on my back at boy scout camp, watching falling stars. And the maple trees that line our street. Or my grandmother's hands, and how her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird. And Janey. And my last thought was of Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it's hard to be angry when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes, I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and I can't take it. My heart swells up like a balloon that's about to burst. But then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it. And then, it flows through me like rain and I feel nothing but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry. You will someday.”

-American Beauty [movie]

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“Death is a beautiful thing... I will do my part...Then I'll just go. Just go.”

-Fela Anikulapo-Kuti

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“Life will die, why prolong the torture by living?”

-Anonymous

Recommended by Michael.

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“Moon shadows haunt.
I remember a honey morning,
Liquid and brilliant.
Desire like poison,
I dream of my death.”

-Anonymous

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“Some days it feels impossible to breathe just one more breath. Some days it feels too possible to contemplate my death.”

-Anonymous

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“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”

-On Suicide, Antonin Artaud

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“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition thats troublesome.”

-Isaac Asimov

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“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”

-LIFE magazine, Isaac Asimov

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“To die would be an awfully great adventure.”

-Peter Pan, James Barrie

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“I have been dying since October. I wake up at night so afraid, so terrified, that I couldn't be that afraid while awake. It has taken its toll. I have come to hate this life in this system of things. I have come to have no hope.”

-Mark O. Barton

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“It's a bargain you make with yourself, okay? An escape hatch, maybe today I'll try drinking see if that makes me feel better. Then drugs. More drugs. Cutting yourself. You're scared, so you make a deal to make yourself feel safer. And if it doesn't stop next week, next month then you're going to do something to make it stop. And the next month comes and the thought of waking up another day and feeling as badly as you did the day before is worse than the unknown. So you decide to jump. Seems simple, clean, elegant.”

-The Bedford Diaries [television show]

Recommended by Shay.

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“It is a brave act to despise death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.”

-Sir Thomas Browne

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“They don't make morgues with windows. In fact, if the geography allows for it, they hardly ever make morgues above ground. I guess it's partly because it must be easier to refrigerate a bunch of coffin-sized chambers in a room insulated by the earth. But that can't be all there is to it. Under the earth means a lot more than relative altitude. It's where dead things fit. Graves are under the earth. So are Hell, Gehenna, Hades, and a dozen other reported afterlives.

Maybe it says something about people. Maybe for us, under the earth is a subtle and profound statement. Maybe ground level provides us with a kind of symbolic boundary marker, an artificial construct that helps us remember that we are alive. Maybe it helps us push death's shadow back from our lives.

I live in a basement apartment and like it. What does that say about me?

Probably that I overanalyze things.”

-Death Masks, Jim Butcher

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“Sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself.”

-Albert Camus

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“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear. And, from this point of view, death is no more worthy of respect than Nero or the inspector at my local police station.”

-Notebooks 1935-1951, Albert Camus

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“...How poor in invention men are! They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic and vulgar motives to your action.”

-The Fall, Albert Camus

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“I'll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.”

-The Fall, Albert Camus

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“Dying, we're all alike. [...] Pain levels us all.”

-Kushiel's Dart, Jacqueline Carey

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“Oscar was afraid of the sea. It smelt of death to him. When he thought about this 'death'. it was not as a single thing you could label with a single word. It was not a discreet entity. It fractured and flew apart, it swarmed like fish, splintered like glass. Death came at him like a ghost in a dream, transmogrifying, protoplasmic, embracing, affectionate, was one minute cold and wet like his father's oilskin, so he shrank from it and cried out in his sleep, pushing the tight-bunched flannel sheet into the pit of his stomach, and then sometimes it was warm and soft and wore the unfocused smile of his mother.”

-Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

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“'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.”

-Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes

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“When you're a little kid, you never think that you'll die. I mean, death is just some obscure, esoteric thing that you see on TV or read about in a book. Then one day you realize what it really is. Then nothing is ever the same again. From that day on, you're fucked.”

-Chance [movie]

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“You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way.”

-Fast Car, Tracy Chapman

Recommended by Ashley.

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“I was by chance spared the sight of Renée dying, then dead. She carried off with her more than one secret, and beneath her purple veil, Renée Vivien, the poet, led away--her throat encircled with moonstones, beryls, aquamarines, and other anemic gems--the immodest child, the excited little girl who taught me, with unembarrassed competence: 'There are fewer ways of making love than they say, and more than one believes.'”

-Colette, as quoted by Dolores Klaich in Woman Plus Woman

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“Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.”

-The Lacon, Charles Caleb Colton

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