“Pain has a threshold and so does death.”

“The city outside, so busy, so full of life, seemed in stark contrast to the deathly silence inside their home. It seemed…like a muffled silence, as if the house itself was holding its breath, waiting…”

“Never fear the thing you feel– Only by love is life made real”

“I am not afraid of death, which after all can’t be far away. What does frighten me, though, is the halfway stage.”

“What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? (Just to give you an idea, Proust’s reply was ‘To be separated from Mama.’) I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.”

“Cad é an mhaith dom eagla a bheith orm? Ní shaorfadh eagla duine ón mbás, dar ndóigh.”

“Fife… simply walked off by himself, into the jungle to look at all the things which would continue to exist after he had ceased to. There were a lot of them. Fife looked at them all. They remained singularly unchanged by his scrutiny.”

“He could not believe that any of them might actually hit somebody. If one did, what a nowhere way to go: killed by accident; slain not as an individual but by sheer statistical probability, by the calculated chance of searching fire, even as he himself might be at any moment. Mathematics! Mathematics! Algebra! Geometry! When 1st and 3d Squads came diving and tumbling back over the tiny crest, Bell was content to throw himself prone, press his cheek to the earth, shut his eyes, and lie there. God, oh, God! Why am I here? Why am I here? After a moment’s thought, he decided he better change it to: why are we here. That way, no agency of retribution could exact payment from him for being selfish.”

“I was afraid, sheer afraid, and wondered at myself. You see, I’ve no more pluck than any man of my inches but I’d been about a good bit. I’d seen adventure and heard other fellows talk it over, and I knew you’re pretty sure to get out of everything with a whole skin till that last particular time that you don’t – so what’s the use of grizzling? (“Golden Baby”)”

“Stay,” he said abruptly. “Stay, feed me. Read to me, if you like. Do not talk to me of death. Do not offer me your fear. I have fear of my own to drive me, and if my own fear is not strong enough to keep me from my duty, yours will only grieve me, girl. It will give me guilt and no rest, but it won’t preserve my life.”

“He knows that after him everything will continue on much as before, except that there will be a minuscule absence, a barely detective gap in the so-called grand scheme, one unit fewer now. Or not even that, not even an empty space where he once was, for all will rush immediately to fill that vacuum. Pft. Gone. Recollections of him will remain in the minds of others for a while, but presently those others too will die and his few relics with them. And then all will be dark.”

“A fool without fear is sometimes wiser than an angel with fear.”

“One of my biggest fears is that I’m going to die alone in my home, and my cats will eat me because I am too dead to open their food cans.”

“How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep silence until my death.”

“Ние живеем в една самоизмама, че сме нужни. Но ако аз умра, животът ще продължи. Животът е милиарди смърти. Аз съм само име, което идва и си отива.(…)Ние живеем в тоя мрак на еднодневки. От пукването на утрото до вечерта. Светът е пълен с имена. И с ужас пред тая краткотрайност.”