"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."
— Oscar Wilde

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
— Mark Twain

"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me"."
— Erma Bombeck

"Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
— William Butler Yeats (The Wind Among the Reeds 1899)

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!"
— C.S. Lewis (The Last Battle)

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"
— Robert Browning (Men and Women and Other Poems)

"I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.

-Della Lee"
— Sarah Addison Allen (The Sugar Queen)

"The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's."
— Mark Twain

"I was waiting for the longest time, she said. I thought you forgot.

It is hard to forget, I said, when there is such an empty space when you are gone."
— Brian Andreas (Story People)

"There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)

"Instead of finding himself in nerd heaven- where every nerd gets fifty-eight virgins to role-play with- he woke up in Robert Wood Johnson with two broken legs and a separated shoulder, feeling like, well, he'd jumped off the New Brunswick train bridge."
— Junot Díaz

"Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would get in."
— Mark Twain

"Each of us has heaven and hell in him..."
— Oscar Wilde

"We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low."
— Desmond Tutu

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll."
— Hunter S. Thompson

"Belize: Hell or heaven?

[Roy indicates "Heaven" through a glance]

Belize: Like San Francisco.

Roy Cohn: A city. Good. I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.

Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy Cohn: Isaiah.

Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.

Roy Cohn: And a dragon atop a golden horde.

Belize: And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.

Roy Cohn: And Heaven?

Belize: That was Heaven, Roy."
— Tony Kushner

"Heaven would be Hell in no time if every cruel, selfish, vicious soul went to Heaven."
— Anne Rice (Memnoch the Devil)

"Do I believe in Heaven and Hell? I do, we have them here; the world is nothing else."
— John Davidson

""i can't understand her"
"well son, you might as well try to understand the sun".

derived form the book:fires of heaven by robert jordan."
— Robert Jordan

"Our heaven is their hell, said God. I like a balanced universe."
— Margaret Atwood (The Tent)

"If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead."
— Lori Lansens (The Girls)

"25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26 My flesh and my heart may fail,but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.Psalm 73"
— Various (The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments in the King James Version Translated Out of the Original Tongues)

"The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience."
— Joseph Campbell

"This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven."
— Rick Bragg

"The propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregard the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained."

Inaugural address 1789"
— George Washington

"Hill House, she thought, You're as hard to get into as heaven."
— Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)

"She sealed his lips with a wanton kiss; 'Though I forgive your breaking your vows to heaven, I expect you to keep your vows to me.'"
— Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk)

"If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there."
— Billy Joel

"Now comes the mystery! (last words)"
— Henry Ward Beecher

"I am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)"
— John Newton

"When I am a good host, I can order the world precisely as I believe it ought to be. It is a world that I have created in my mind and in my own image, and it gladdens me profoundly to see it unfold without original sin, without expulsions and floods and disobedience and illness. When I am a good guest, I have returned to Eden, where everything I need is provided for me, including companionship and a benevolent deity at my shoulder serving me and protecting me. The concept of paradise may be backward-looking but the concept of heaven is anticipatory. Perhaps this is what heaven will be like? A great table of oak worn smooth with age and candle wax; a dimly lit room, a quartet of angels playing Sarah Vaughan in the corner; this blissful throb of quiet, intelligent conversation; bubbling pots and aromatic stews that no one seems to have worked to prepare; and you - you have nothing to worry about, not now, not here, not for all eternity. Leave it all behind at the threshold, forget everything, for here in heaven, you are my guest. "
— Jesse Browner

"To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity."
— C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

"When confronted by a ‘believer’ it is easy for me to contrast the views of the skeptic with those of the rationalist. I simply reach into my pocket and pull out my change.

Holding a quarter aloft, I say, ‘This is a most remarkable coin, for it is heavier than all the sins of humanity committed since the beginning of the human race.’

I then hold up a nickel and say, ‘This coin is even more amazing, as it is brighter and shinier than the flames that proceeded from the Burning Bush discovered on Mt. Sinai by Moses.’

Then I raise a penny and state, ‘This portrait of President Lincoln is more realistic and true-to-life than any portrait of Satan ever painted.’

And finally, I hold out a bright, shiny dime and say, ‘And this dime is the most amazing of all because it is heavier and contains more precious metals than all the gold bricks in the streets of Heaven.’

I end with ‘Give to Caesar what is his, and hold the rest of it dear—for it is all you see and touch—and the Christian god can take care of all his things, for they amount to less than this 41 cents I hold here in my hand.’"
— Emanuel Haldeman-Julius

"Wherever you go..., you'll see Heaven and Hell on every side... in us. Look for them and you'll soon know them. There on your left, Hell shuffles by, carrying a reluctant, gloomy chicken, his only comrade. There on your right, Heaven spring past, singing - a lunatic, a little too much for civilized contact.

Just the way it always was."
— Daniel Quinn (Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly As "The Little Book")

"A mind, not to be changed by place or time, is its own place and, in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
— John Milton