fe2ec55
|
"but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, "Oh, if I were young again." You never hear people say, "I wish I were sixty-five." He smiled. "You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning. Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five. "Listen. You should know something. All younger people should know something. If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow. "And Mitch?" He lowered his voice. "The fact is, you are going to die eventually." I nodded. "It won't matter what you tell yourself." I know."
|
|
death
|
Mitch Albom |
4c888e0
|
I may be dying, but I am surrounded by loving, caring souls. How many people can say that?
|
|
ill
live
death
life
love
dying
|
Mitch Albom |
fede91b
|
And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a 'living funeral'. Each of them spoke and paid tribute.. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem: 'My dear and loving cousin.. Your ageless heart as you move through time, layer on layer, tender sequoia..' .. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day.
|
|
living-funeral
death
life
love
share
celebrate
|
Mitch Albom |
91faff9
|
In keeping with your policy of bringing Pollution the latest in death and violence, and in living colour, there's going to be something entirely different... death without remediation.
|
|
violence
television
living
death
christine-chubbuck
remediation
policy
pop-culture
colour
pollution
|
Rebecca McNutt |
927621b
|
From love's absolutism to love's absolution? No: I don't believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it's far too neat, a movie-maker's bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.
|
|
death
love
closure
platitudes
the-only-story
julian-barnes
realism
redemption
sad
|
Julian Barnes |
a690594
|
"Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren't the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary," Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. "Sydney Tar Ponds," Mearth added, "I've had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I've forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult... very sad... to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren't worth the trouble. I'd rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren't always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn't you agree?" "No," Alecto told her. "I think you're insane."
|
|
loss
human
death
friendship
housefly
mother-earth
personification
ordinary
pollution
friend
irish
forget
sad
insane
dying
memory
|
Rebecca McNutt |
899eef4
|
"Tell yourselves whatever you'd like, but I'm afraid it doesn't make it true," Mearth sighed, beginning to look impatient. "Step aside Mandy, I have to remediate him, otherwise you'll find yourself in a whole mess of trouble." "You can't do this, it's wrong," Mandy insisted. "You don't have a choice, Mandy! Either you let his life compromise the lives of everybody else in the world, or you let me remediate him and get it over with," Mearth icily declared. "...Do what she says, Mandy Valems...." Alecto added, standing up and staring with glazed eyes at Mearth. "I can't," said Mandy. "...Go away!" Alecto shouted at her suddenly, glaring with narrowed eyes, speaking in a voice that hardly sounded like his own. "Get out of here, Mandy Valems! I hate you, I want you to leave me alone! Go home and don't ever come back here!" "I...." Mandy started, looking totally shocked. "I said I hate you, don't you understand anything? Go away, get out of here!" Alecto repeated menacingly, stepping forward in a threatening manner. He looked like a mad dog, shivering as he chased her away from his site. She tearfully took off running, seeming both shocked and horrified, and he watched her leave for a moment with a blank expression, his dark eyes hollow. He looked like he was going to black out, but Mearth walked quickly towards him, for once not smiling at all. If it weren't for her eyes, she would've looked like a person. "That was very cruel of you to do, Sydney Tar Ponds. I thought you loved her," she disappointedly exclaimed. "I do love her, she's my friend, and that's why I said that stuff to her," Alecto replied forlornly. "None of it's true, I don't hate her at all... but I know what's going to happen and I don't want her to see it, so I lied to her and told her I hated her... can you explain to her after... why I said all that to her?"
|
|
illness
earth
grief
loss
depression
faith
death
friendship
hope
life
love
nova-scotia
environment
rescue
pollution
help
dog
dying
|
Rebecca McNutt |
f8ede1a
|
What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.
|
|
evolution
motherhood
death
pregnancy
mother
|
Terry Tempest Williams |
64bf831
|
What a waste.. All those people saying all those wonderful things, and Irv never got to hear any of it.
|
|
death
life
funeral
tribute
|
Mitch Albom |
858a3b5
|
They never look very big on the table, the bodies. It's built to accommodate the largest frames, there's that. And they're naked. But it's something else. That parcel of the being called the soul-weighing twenty-one grams, according to the experiments of the American doctor Duncan MacDougall-takes up a surprising amount of space, like aloud voice. In its absence, the body seems to shrink
|
|
death
dead-bodies
post-mortem
body
soul
|
Yann Martel |
352fd44
|
There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, 'I want to live..' 'So far, I've been able to do it. Will I be able to continue? I don't know. But I'm betting on myself I will.' Koppel seemed extremely taken with Morrie. He asked about the humility that death induced.
|
|
live
choice
death
life
bitter
mourn
cry
decision
humility
|
Mitch Albom |
cbbf16d
|
"Had it not been for "Nightline," Morrie would have died without ever seeing me again. I had no good excuse for this, except the one that everyone these days seems to have. I had become too wrapped up in the siren song of my life. I was busy."
|
|
ill
death
life
workaholic
excuse
friend
|
Mitch Albom |
39275d2
|
And on a cold Sunday afternoon, he was joined in his home by a small group of friends and family for a 'living funeral'. Each of them spoke and paid tribute.. Some cried. Some laughed. One woman read a poem: 'My dear and loving cousin.. Your ageless heart as you ,love through time, layer on layer, tender sequoia..' .. And all the heartfelt things we never get to say to those we love, Morrie said that day.
|
|
living-funeral
living
death
life
funeral
tribute
|
Mitch Albom |
9b32cc8
|
Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead.
|
|
loss
humour
death
humor
|
Christopher Fowler |
ad9643d
|
..I buried myself in accomplishments, because with accomplishments, I believed I could control things, I could squeeze in every last piece of happiness before I got sick and died.. which I figured was my natural fate.
|
|
fate
happy
achieve
death
life
perspective
control
thought
|
Mitch Albom |
73f4be2
|
There is a sense of the human spirit as always existing. This makes our own death bearable.
|
|
existence
death
life
creativity
|
Jeanette Winterson |
c69ca0f
|
"I knew from the first glimpse that he was dead. But I ran to him". There was no way in which to describe his feelings, because he hadn't had any. The world had simply ceased in that moment, and with it, all his knowledge of how things were done. He simply could not see how life might continue. The first lesson of adult life was it, horribly, did."
|
|
mourning
death
|
Diana Gabaldon |
38dbc1a
|
It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment. Following directly upon his decision, Leamas was aware of a comparable sensation; relief, short-lived but consoling, sustained him for a time. It was followed by fear and hunger.
|
|
death
spy
|
John le Carré |
35ce712
|
"We must learn to live with danger, " he now said to Kino. "Do you mean the ocean and the volcano cannot hurt us if we are not afraid?" Kino asked. "No," his father replied. "I did not say that. Ocean is there and volcano is there. It is true that on any day ocean may rise into storm and volcano may burst into flame. We must accept this fact, but without fear. We must say, 'Someday I shall die, and does it matter whether it is by ocean or volcano, or whether I grow old and weak?' "
|
|
fear
death
|
Pearl S. Buck. buch |
75e4779
|
In tutta sincerita, mi sforzo di prendere la faccenda allegramente, anche se, a dispetto delle mie proteste, la maggior parte delle persone trova difficile credermi. Per favore, fidati di me. Posso davvero essere allegra. Posso essere amabile. Affettuosa. Affabile. E queste sono solo le parole che cominciano per A. Non chiedermi pero di essere bella: essere bella non e da me.
|
|
death
humor
inspirational
|
Markus Zusak |
71676dd
|
"Cheese is all about the dark side of life" - Sister Noella; aka The Cheese Nun"
|
|
death
life
fermentation
foodie
decay
cooking
food
|
Michael Pollan |
0d0b856
|
"First the colors. Then the humans. That's usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.
|
|
mortality
humanity
death
rhyming
the-book-thief
fact
humans
|
Markus Zusak |
6466853
|
Even from high above, I could feel Amanda's hate. Or perhaps it was another dimension of my Shadow, my own hate for her closing in on me. Despite all I had learned and seen, I wished to God someone would choke her to death so I could get ahold of her and choke her some more.
|
|
hatred
hate
death
amanda-parrish
remember-me
shari-cooper
christopher-pike
threats
ghosts
|
Christopher Pike |
ed0ccd3
|
That is the difference between you and me. You had only one story to tell.' She stops and grins once more. 'I have millions.
|
|
death
queen-beetle
roxanne-wells
whisper-of-death
christopher-pike
storytellers
stories
|
Christopher Pike |
039c153
|
I spose it's wrong to pray that someone dies... But I've thought about all the prayers. If that's what I was doing them years...Asking something, someone, anything, for a big black anvil to fall from the sky like in the cartoons. Kerang! On Wankbag's head. Because nothing else was gunna save [me]...
|
|
irony
death
religion
salvation
|
Tim Winton |
dd253fb
|
the ute was casting a shadow that no light was ever gonna make. A shadow doesn't search for a drain like that. Shadows don't have blowflies drowning in them.
|
|
death
decay
|
Tim Winton |
fa1a304
|
His wife killed him. Too simple. His childhood, his mother, his father, his siblings? Even if the scars of childhood heal, you never grow out of being vulnerable. Age is no shield against trauma.
|
|
death
vunerable
childhood-trauma
trauma
|
Mario Puzo |
d46715e
|
"... "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the terms of the world," says an old Buddhist teaching. In other words: Get used to it."
|
|
world
death
life
the-wise
teaching
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
baaaa72
|
That had day changed him. It had changed the entire village. Shaken by the death of a boy they had loved, each person found ways to be more worthy of the sacrifice he had made. They had become kinder, more careful, more attentive to one another.
|
|
grief
kindness
sacrifice
death
redemption
|
Lois Lowry |
eb2e08f
|
Did I know that the reason Hitler had been able to slaughter six million Jews without too much complaint from the world was that for two thousand years the world had been taught that Jews, not Romans, had killed that man?
|
|
time
spirituality
death
life-lessons
jewish-identity
|
Chaim Potok |
84c0f74
|
Thomas Blanky wondered if he had been an instrument of evil -- or perhaps just of folly -- when he had used his more than three decades of ice-master skills to get 126 men the impossible 250 miles through ice to this place where all they could do was die
|
|
death
sailing
folly
ice
ship
skill
evil
|
Dan Simmons |
50d065d
|
And to Marie Laure this is a double cruelty: that everything else keeps living, that the spinning earth does not pause for even an instant in its trip around the sun.
|
|
death
unfairness
|
Anthony Doerr |
f2de49c
|
Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies.
|
|
death
life
|
Gregory Maguire |
ea639a3
|
Her favourite song was 'God Has Blotted Them Out,' which was meant to be about sins, but really was about anyone who had ever annoyed her, which was everyone. She just didn't like anyone and she just didn't like life. Life was a burden to be carried as far as the grave and then dumped. Life was a Vale of Tears. Life was a pre-death experience.
|
|
revenge
death
religion
god
life
misanthropy
vengeance
|
Jeanette Winterson |
d4aaebe
|
-De aur? Chiar? Zau, Paula, ce poate fi de aur in privinta mortii? -Irv, m-a mustrat Paula, asta e o intrebare gresita! Incearca sa intelegi ca de aur nu e moartea, ci trairea deplina a vietii fata in fata cu moartea. Gandeste-te cat de intense si de pretioase sunt ultimele experiente: ultima primavara, ultimul zbor al pufului de papadie, ultima scuturare a florilor de wisteria. Perioada de aur este, spunea Paula, si vremea marii eliberari - o vreme in care ai libertatea sa zici nu tuturor obligatiilor banale, sa te dedici cu totul lucrurilor de care iti pasa cel mai tare - prezenta prietenilor, anotimpurile care se schimba, unduirea marii.
|
|
living
death
mindful-living
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
27ee7eb
|
You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me.... You'll be all right.
|
|
death
grieving
|
Cormac McCarthy |
4abf3a7
|
"Decisions are difficult for many reasons, some reaching down into the very socket of being. John Gardner, in his novel Grendel, tells of a wise man who sums up his meditation on life's mysteries in two simple but terrible postulates: "Things fade: alternatives exclude." Of the first postulate, death, I have already spoken. The second, "alternatives exclude," is an important key to understanding why decision is difficult. Decision invariably involves renunciation: for every yes there must be a no, each decision eliminating or killing other options (the root of the word decide means "slay," as in homicide or suicide). Thus, Thelma clung to the infinitesimal chance that she might once again revive her relationship with her lover, renunciation of that possibility signifying diminishment and death."
|
|
death
decisions
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
205e429
|
The last gift a parent can give to children is to teach them, through example, how to face death with equanimity.
|
|
death
equanimity
gift
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
cf06fb9
|
"Con un coltello, un coltellino, in un giorno di festa, tra le due e le tre, si uccisero i due uomini dell'amore. Con un coltello, un coltellino che lo contiene una mano, ma che penetra sottile fra le carni stupite, e si ferma nel punto
|
|
violence
poetry
death
italiano
|
Federico García Lorca |
f13c1b1
|
"There is no one who in giving a kiss does not feel the smile of faceless people,
|
|
death
kisses
|
Federico García Lorca |
61a6846
|
And there I lie in these damned bandages for a week. And there he lies, swathed up too, like a little mummy. And never crying. But now I like raking him in my arms and looking at him. A lovely forehead, incredibly white, the eyebrows drawn very faintly in gold dust... Well, this was a funny time. (The big bowl of coffee in the morning with a pattern of red and blue flowers. I was always so thirsty.) But uneasy, uneasy... Ought a baby to be as pretty as this, as pale as this, as silent as this? The other babies yell from morning to night. Uneasy... When I complain about the bandages she says: 'I promise you that when you take them off you'll be just as you were before.' And it is true. When she takes them off there is not one line, not one wrinkle, not one crease. And five weeks afterwards there I am, with not one line, not one wrinkle, not one crease. And there he is, lying with a ticket tied around his wrist because he died in a hospital. And there I am looking down at him, without one line, without one wrinkle, without one crease...
|
|
motherhood
grief
death
birth
baby
grief-and-loss
nurse
mother
hospital
|
Jean Rhys |
16fc3cf
|
All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too shakable convinction of faith. And if they have been able to sustain that slim hope in the face of darkness, then so must I.
|
|
faith
death
|
Dan Simmons |
99cb5ba
|
To lose a parent or a lifelong friend is often to lose the past: the person who died may be the only other living witness to golden events of long ago. But to lose a child is to lose the future: what is lost is no less than one's life project--what one lives for, how one projects oneself into the future, how one may hope to transcend death (indeed, one's child becomes one's immortality project).
|
|
immortality
death
child-loss
|
Irvin D. Yalom |
b742e90
|
I'm just bones in a box, Teddy.
|
|
death
death-of-a-loved-one
|
Dennis Lehane |
68bd543
|
How many close encounters with death can one person survive? At the age of 21, I had surpassed more than 10 such close encounters with death, which began when I was but 5 years of age. This enemy who has been hotly pursuing me for more than 16 years has no shame to his game at all. At least with me there were certain things I would've never done, and knowingly hurt a child was just one of them.
|
|
death
hot-pursuit
street-code
near-misses
enemy
survival
principles
|
Drexel Deal |
1229e87
|
There's nothing here. Nothing at all.' Marina gave me a look that I could not fathom. 'You're wrong,' she said. 'The memories of hundreds of people lie here. Their lives, their feelings, their expectations, their absence, the dreams that never came true for them, the disappointments, the deceptions and the unrequited loves that poisoned their existence... All that is here, trapped for ever.
|
|
death
|
Carlos Ruiz Zafón |
d76c8ba
|
This deadly body of mine can dance, too.
|
|
death
|
Muriel Spark |