All Quotes By Tag: Death

“The real hell of this,” he told her, “is that you’re going to get through it.”

“Pentru mine, moartea este doar hotarul unde încetează să mai existe “mâine”. Numai până acolo poți să iubești, să visezi, să regreți. Brusc, tot ce n-ai făcut va rămâne pentru totdeauna nefăcut.”

“As for my own part I care not for death, for all men are mortal; and though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom.”

“I love you,” he said, his voice catching. “When I thought you were going to die, I wanted to die.”

“Every day is a lie. But you are dying. That is not a lie. ”

“She had no time for sleep, with the weight of the world upon her shoulders. And she feared to dream. Sleep is a little death, dreams the whisperings of the Other, who would drag us all into his eternal night.”

“The dead look so terribly dead when they’re dead.”

“War is not just the business of death, it is the antitheses of life.”

“And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.”

“It’s okay if you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. But that’s what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting.”

“Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left – that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood. (51)”

“What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian’s. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that’s the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.’I thought I’d find you here,’ said a voice at my elbow.It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. ‘You know,’ I said to him, ‘everybody is saying that you’re dead.’He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. ‘I’m not dead,’ he said. ‘I’m only having a bit of trouble with my passport.”What?’He cleared his throat. ‘My movements are restricted,’ he said.’I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.’Hagia Sophia. St. Mark’s, in Venice. ‘What is this place?’ I asked him.’That information is classified, I’m afraid.’1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.’Is it open to the public?’ I said.’Not generally, no.’I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn’t time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.’Are you happy here?’ I said at last.He considered this for a moment. ‘Not particularly,’ he said.’But you’re not very happy where you are, either.’St. Basil’s, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.’I hope you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘but I’m late for an appointment.’He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.”

“Death is just the last scene of the last act.”

“He made me feel unhinged . . . like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.”

“He is sorry-For everything-For Prentisstown-For Viola-For Ben-For every failure and every wrong-For letting his pa down-And he’s looking up at me-And he’s begging me-He’s begging me-Like I’m the only one who can forgive him-Like it’s only me who’s got the power-Todd?-Please-And all I can say is “Davy-“And the fright and the terror in his Noise is too much-It’s too much-And then it stops.Davy slumps, eyes still open, eyes still staring back at me, eyes still asking (I swear) for me to forgive him.And he lies there, still.Davy Prentiss is dead.”