Death Quotes

“It's better to burn out than to fade away.”
― Neil Young

“If I die, I will wait for you, do you understand? No matter how long. I will watch from beyond to make sure you live every year you have to its fullest, and then we’ll have so much to talk about when I see you again… (Bones)”
― Jeaniene Frost

“The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Ginny, listen...I can't be involved with you anymore. We've got to stop seeing each other. We can't be together."
"It's for some stupid noble reason isn't it?"
"It's been like...like something out of someone else's life these last few weeks with you. But I can't...we can't...I've got to do things alone now. Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you were my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get me through you."
"What if I don't care?"
"I care. How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral...and it was my fault...”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
― Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

“There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“No one can say that death found in me a willing comrade, or that I went easily.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.”
― Dylan Thomas

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka

“I'm gonna kill him," Eve said, or at least that was what it sounded like filtered through the pillow.
Stake him right in the heart, shove garlic up his ass, and-and-"

And what?" (Michael)

When did you get home?" Claire demanded.

Apparently just in time to hear my funeral plans. I especially like the garlic up the ass. It's...different.”
― Rachel Caine, Feast of Fools

“Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.”
― Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year

“But death was her curse and her gift, and death had been her good friend these long, long years.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight

“The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but there was room there for humour, too.”
― Nalo Hopkinson, Brown Girl in the Ring

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

“Killing is not so easy as the innocent believe.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”
― William S. Burroughs

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Nameless City

“Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.”
― H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

“I wish...I wish I were dead...”
“And what use would that be to anyone?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“The idea of being strong for someone else having never entered their heads, I find myself in the position of having to console them. Since I'm the person going in to be slaughtered, this is somewhat annoying.”
― Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

“The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.”
― James Patterson, The Angel Experiment