“I was 27 years old the first time I died. I remember there was white everywhere. There was war and I felt alive but really I was dead. Sometimes I think we live through things only to be able to say that it happened. That it wasn't to someone else, it was to me. Sometimes we live to beat the odds. I'm not crazy even though they thought I was. I live in the same world as everyone else; I just saw more of it, as I'm sure you have. They'll find my body tomorrow; you can check it out if you don't believe me.... Sometimes life can only really begin with the knowledge of death, that it can all end even when you least want it to. The important thing in life is to believe, while you are still alive, its never too late. I promise you, no matter how bad things look, they look better awake then they do asleep. When you die there is only one thing you want to happen. You want to come back.”

The Jacket [movie] Recommended by Kaylee.

“Sh...
Hush now.
Don't say a word.
Just see... watch me perform.
They clap and cheer when I come on stage.
Now this is very common at my age.
They watch me work, making my knots,
thinking that I am programmed like a robot.
I get everything ready and walk up the stairs.
There eyes widen not known what's really there.
I take my work and place it around my neck,
I step off the ledge to do my beautiful dance.
They here the crack, the breaking of my neck.
They cheer and clap now,
thinking nothing of it.
That they just witnessed a suicide,
that it was all real.”

-watch me-, Jackie

“He had kept each year in his own fashion the date of Mary Antrim's death. It would be more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion kept him: it kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage had had of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl who was to have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace. She had died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that promised to fill his life to the brim.”

Altar of the Dead, Henry James

“Death is lighter than a feather; duty, heavier than a mountain.”

The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan Recommended by Sara.

“If you must mount the gallows, give a jest to the crowd, a coin to the hangman, and make the drop with a smile on your lips.”

The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan

“If I would kill myself tonight, who would remember me tomorrow?”

Josette

“It's so hard to live when you know you don't want to.”

Josette

“The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.”

Dubliners, James Joyce

“The other day I wrote down the following wish: 'When passing a house, to be pulled in through the ground-floor window by a rope tied around one's neck and to be hauled up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dropping the last shreds of me when breaking through the roof tiles, appears on the roof.”

letter, Franz Kafka

“Old Rawler. Cut both nuts off and bled to death, sitting right on the can in the latrine, half a dozen people in there with him didn't know it till he fell off to the floor, dead. What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.”

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey

“For the woman who is dead is a woman with no defenses; she has no more power, she has no more influence; people no longer respect either her wishes or her tastes; the dead woman cannot will anything, cannot aspire to any respect or refute any slander. Never had he felt such sorrowful, such agonising compassion for her as when she was dead.”

Ignorance, Milan Kundera

“Dying is easy, it's living that scares me to death.”

Cold, Annie Lennox

“In the middle of the room was a canopy, from which hung curtains of red brocaded stuff, and, under the canopy, an open coffin. 'That is where I sleep,' said Erik. 'One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity.'”

The Phantom Of The Opera, Gaston Leroux

“I am the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.”

Abraham Lincoln

“i've been trying to give myself reasons to live
and i really can't think of one thing

i drive around, i walk around in circles
'cause i've got no sense of direction
and i guess i've got no sense at all.”

All the Umbrellas in London, Magnetic Fields

“You're tender and you're tired
You can't be bothered to decide
Whether you live or die
Or just forget about your life
Drift away and die
Never say goodbye.”

You're Tender and You're Tired, Manic Street Preachers Recommended by david.

“They'll just cut our wrists like
Cheap coupons and say that death
Was on sale today.”

The Fight Song, Marilyn Manson

“I only live to dream. I only dream to sleep. I only sleep to wake. I only wake to die.”

Mark Recommended by Robyn.

“I always thought that dead people should have hats on. Now I can see that they shouldn't. I can see that they have a head like wax and a handkerchief tied around their jawbone. I can see that they have their mouth open a little and that behind the purple lips you can see the stained and irregular teeth. I can see that they keep their tongue bitten over to one side, thick and sticky, a little darker than the colour of their face, which is like the colour of fingers clutching a stick. I can see that they have their eyes open much wider than a man's, anxious and wild, and that their skin seems to be made of tight damp earth. I thought that a dead man would look like somebody quiet and asleep and now I can see that it's just the opposite. I can see that he looks like someone awake and in a rage after a fight.”

Leaf Storm, Gabriel García Márquez

“On Sunday night I tried on the wedding dress in my step-mother's bedroom. I looked pale and clean in the mirror, wrapped in that cloud of powdery froth that reminded me of my mother's ghost. I said to myself in front of the mirror: 'That's me. Isabel. I'm dressed as a bride who's going to be married tomorrow morning.' And I didn't recognise myself; I felt weighted down with the memory of my dead mother. Meme had spoken to me about her on this same corner a few days before. she told me that after I was born my mother was dressed in her bridal clothes and placed in a coffin. And now, looking at myself in the mirror, I saw my mother's bones covered by the mold of the tomb in a pile of crumpled gauze and compact yellow dust. I was outside the mirror. Inside was my mother, alive again, looking at me, stretching her arms out from her frozen space, trying to touch the death that was held together by the first pins of my bridal veil. And in back, in the center of the bedroom, my father, perplexed: 'She looks just like her now in that dress.'

That night I received my first, last, and only love letter.”

Leaf Storm, Gabriel García Márquez

“Then the worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turns to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
but none, I think, do there embrace.”

To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell

“Wells stood over the woman studying her. She'd been shot through the forehead and had tilted forward leaving part of the back of her skull and a good bit of dried brainmatter stuck to the slat of the rocker behind her. She had a newspaper in her lap and she was wearing a cotton robe that was black with dried blood. It was cold in the room. Wells looked around. A second shot had marked a date on a calendar on the wall behind her that was three days hence. You could not help but notice. He looked around the rest of the room. He took a small camera from his jacket pocket and took a couple of pictures of the dead woman and put the camera back in his pocket again. Not what you had in mind at all, was it darling? he told her.”

No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy

“The master says it's a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it's a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there's anyone in the world who would like us to live.”

Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt

“The bleakness of the landscape is unimaginable. It is as friendless and alien as a Dali painting. Ordinary concerns, such as work or friends, have no place here. Futility muffles thought; time elongates cruelly. Who is to blame for this situation? Those with depression think it must be them. Pointlessness and self-loathing govern them. So the natural final step is suicide. People with depression don't kill themselves to frighten an errant boyfriend. They kill themselves because it is the obvious and right thing to do at that point. It is the only positive step they can think of. ”

Kay McKall Recommended by Shay.

“The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.”

Essays, Michel de Montaigne