"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
— Woody Allen

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
— Anaïs Nin

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."
— Mark Twain

"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to."
— Jimi Hendrix

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."
— Mitch Albom

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life."
— Terry Pratchett (The Last Continent)

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
— Oscar Wilde

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
— e.e. cummings

"I don't want to die without any scars."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"
— Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)

"Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal."
— Benjamin Franklin

"People living deeply have no fear of death."
— Anaïs Nin

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."
— William S. Burroughs

"When we truly love, it is never lost. It is only after death that the depth of the bond is truly felt, and our loved one becomes more a part of us than was possible in life."
— Oriental tradition.

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."
— Thomas Campbell

"After a battle lasting many ages,
The Devil won,
And said to God
(who had been his Maker):
'Lord,
We are about to witness the unmaking of Creation
By my hand.
I would not wish you
to think me cruel,
So I beg you, take three things
From this world before I destroy it.
Three things, and then the rest will be
wiped away.'

God thought for a little time.
And at last He said:
'No, there is nothing.'
The Devil was surprised.
'Not even you, Lord?' he said.
And God said:
'No. Not even me.'"
— Clive Barker (Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War)

"O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest - A dammed saint, an honourable villian!
-Juliet 3.2. VS 79"
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

"Life is too short when you think of the length of death"
— Sean Mangan

"It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Sweets to the sweet."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl....""
— Abigail Padgett (Blue)

"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."
— H.L. Mencken

"There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and death."
— Fran Lebowitz

"It's been a prevalent notion. Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation. And someday, somehow, before the end, a gathering back to home. A messenger from the Kingdom, arriving at the last moment. But I tell you there is no such message, no such home -- only the millions of last moments . . . nothing more. Our history is an aggregate of last moments."
— Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard it seems to me most strange that men should fear seeing that death a necessary end will come when it will come (Julius Caesar, Act II, Scene 2)"
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell."
— William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

"When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.

And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.

Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.

We lived and died together.

All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.

And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.

And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die"
— Amelia Burr

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."
— William S. Burroughs

"Reproduction is more pleasurable than death."
— Herman E. Daly

"Dead, we are revealed in our true dimensions, and they are surprisingly modest."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

"You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water..."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’
- Tithonus"
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,

Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases."
— Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs Du Mal)

"But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,
And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,
And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes.
- Tithonus"
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the hemorrhage none can staunch, the grief,
the curse no man can bear.

But there is a cure in the house, and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.

Now hear, you blissful powers underground --
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now."
— Aeschylus (The Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon/The Libation-Bearers/The Furies)

"Once to swim I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty son-bird, perished.
Never come a-fishing, father,
To the borders of these waters,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest daughter Aino.

Mother dear, I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors,
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty song-bird perished.
Never mix thy bread, dear mother,
With the blue-sea's foam and waters,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest daughter Aino.
Brother dear, I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty song-bird perished.
Never bring thy prancing war-horse,
Never bring thy royal racer,
Never bring thy steeds to water,
To the borders of the blue-sea,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest sister Aino.

Sister dear, I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty song-bird perished.
Never come to lave thine eyelids
In this rolling wave and sea-foam,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest sister Aino.
All the waters in the blue-sea
Shall be blood of Aino's body;
All the fish that swim these waters
Shall be Aino's flesh forever;
All the willows on the sea-side
Shall be Aino's ribs hereafter;
All the sea-grass on the margin
Will have grown from Aino's tresses."
— Elias Lönnrot (Kalevala)

"Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway id doorless."
— Kathy Acker (Pussy, King of the Pirates)