Dead Souls Quotes

I had an overwhelming sense of the lonliness of this city - a trillion souls in their bedrooms, high in the cliffs of windows. I thought of what was underneath it all - I thought of the electricty cables, steam, water, fire, subway trains and lava in the city's guts, the subterranean rumbling of trains and earthquakes. I thought of the dead souls from the war, concreted over. ~ Mo Hayder

This is new. I never heard of Hellions vivisecting their own. They do it to some of the more heinous dead souls in the House of Knives, but not to each other. Whatever ~ Richard Kadrey

And he imagines cars
and rides them in his dreams,
so lonely growing up among
the imaginary automobiles
and dead souls of Tarrytown
to create
out of his own imagination
the beauty of his wild
forebears - a mythology
he cannot inherit. ~ Allen Ginsberg

The dead souls will say, "how lucky are the living souls. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

An innocent breath of life comes from the deep of all darkness! It just takes a moment, an instant and right after, everything becomes absolutely corrupted! The existence, the thought! I've lived in nothingness for eternities, I know, I have felt it, it was engraved in my soul. Although I cannot give faith and witness… I know; I've been in nothingness and from the nothingness I have returned..."
An excerpt from the book: The Master Of Realities: The Labyrinth Of The Dead Souls ~ E.C. Lemus

Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and then ask the ghosts if honor matters ~ Javik

I too have been in the underworld, as was Odysseus, and I will often be there again; not only sheep have I sacrificed so as to beable to speak with a few dead souls, but neither have I spared my own blood as well. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Even Pushkin, who could understand everything, did not grasp the real significance of Dead Souls. He thought that the author was grieving for Russia, ignorant, savage, and outdistanced by the other nations. But it is not only in Russia that Gogol discovers "dead souls." All men, great and small, seem to him lunatics, lifeless, automata which obediently and mechanically carry out commandments imposed on them from without. They eat, they drink, they sin, they multiply; with stammering tongue they pronounce meaningless words. No trace of free will, no sparkle of understanding, not the slightest wish to awake from their thousand-year sleep. ~ Lev Shestov

On Friday night, you stole the life of an exceptional being, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate. I don't know who you are and I don't want to know. You are dead souls. If that God for whom you blindly kill made us in his image, every bullet in my wife's body will have been a wound in his heart.

So, no, I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you. That is what you want, but to respond to your hate with anger would be to yield to the same ignorance that made you what you are. You want me to be scared, to see my fellow citizens through suspicious eyes, to sacrifice my freedom for security. You have failed. I will not change.

I saw her this morning. At last, after days and nights of waiting. She was as beautiful as when she went out on Friday evening, as beautiful as when I fell madly in love with her more than twelve years ago. Of course I'm devastated by grief, I grant you that small victory, but it will be short-lived. I know that she will be with us every day and that we will see each other in the paradise of free souls to which you will never have access.

There are only two of us – my son and myself – but we are stronger than all the armies of the world. Anyway, I don't have any more time to waste on you, as I must go to see Melvil, who is waking up from his nap. He is only seventeen months old. He will eat his snack as he does every day, then we will play as we do every day, and all his life this ~ Antoine Leiris

It was never about money for us it was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something to those dead souls inching along the freeways in their metal coffins. We show them that the human spirit is still alive ~ Bhikkhu Bodhi

Perhaps, also this short embrace may infuse in their veins a little of this thrill which they would not have known without it, and will give to those two dead souls, brought to life in a second, the rapid and divine sensation of this intoxication, of this madness which gives to lovers more happiness in an instant than other men can gather during a whole lifetime. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Who, despite the pretensions of this society,
can sleep in it in peace when they know that it derives its mediocre pleasures from the work of millions of
dead souls? ~ Albert Camus

I didn't know if I should put my faith in God or Satan. Was there really a difference at the end of the day, when we were all going to be dead souls anyway? ~ Jess C. Scott

The Victim was a chronic fuck-up. People Like her always seemed to hang out with The Poisonous Cunt. In turn, she kept their self-esteem low and made sure that they stayed in psychic immiseration. She was a curator of dead souls. ~ Irvine Welsh

Somehow, too, I remembered Chichikov's round of weird visits in Gogol's Dead Souls. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe. ~ Nikolai Gogol

A hairdresser talking with the Doctoresse about the bombing:
- "I'm not afraid of it. The dead are better off than we are."
- "But you don't know that."
- "Yes, I do. I'm sure of it because not a single one of them has ever returned. ~ Ernst Junger

Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is ~ Laini Taylor

Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book ... ~ Nikolai Gogol

Dead souls have more to say than living ones. ~ Elie Wiesel

In the old man's face there was nothing very special - save that the chin was so greatly projected that whenever he spoke he was forced to wipe it with a handkerchief to avoid dribbling. ~ Nikolai Gogol

How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis. ~ Gustave Flaubert

That prose is a verse, and verse is a prose; convincing all, by demonstrating plain – poetic souls delight in prose insane ~ Lord Byron

Pulling out onto the highway I noticed a stone pillar commemorating the Donner Party. They were a true testament to the American spirit, push forward at all costs and eat the dead when necessary. Wasn't that the American dream in a nutshell. ~ Josh Stallings

The manufacturing corporation, except in comparatively few instances, no longer represents a protecting care, a parental influence, over its operatives. It is too often a soulless organization; and its members forget that they are morally responsible for the souls and bodies, as well as for the wages, of those whose labor is the source of their wealth. ~ Harriet Hanson Robinson

It is an ill thing to meet a man you thought dead in the woodland at dusk. ~ Robert E. Howard

My private history in terms of people in my life who are dead is very easy to discuss. I don't feel those people can be threatened or intruded upon now. But I am enormously protective of the people who are currently in my life, my existing friends and family. That is where the curtain is drawn. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Win took another putt. Another make. "We're not the same, you and I. We both know that. But it's okay." "It's not okay." "Yes, it is. If we were the same it wouldn't work. We'd both be dead by now. Or insane. We balance each other. It's why you're my best friend. It's why I love you." Silence. "Don't do it again," Myron said. Win did not reply. He lined up another putt. "Did you hear me?" "It's time to move on," Win said. "This incident is in the past. You know better than to try to control the future." More silence. Win sank another putt. ~ Harlan Coben

According to your medical checkup, you are dead. ~ Rene Desmaison

The (cancer) cells, technically speaking, are immortals. The woman from whose body they were once taken has been dead for thirty years ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be. ~ Stephen Fry

Empty man. Walk thru shadows. All lives the same. They give you wishes. The old people at the window. Dead man. Rised, come gory to their side. Wish to be lovely, to be some other self. Even here, without you. Some other soul. Than the filth I feel. Have in me. Guilt, like something of God's. Some separate suffering self. ~ LeRoi Jones

There it sat, perfect as a fresh-laid egg on the dead sea bottom, the only nucleus of light and warmth in hundreds of miles of lonely wasteland. It was like a heart beating alone in a great dark body. He felt almost sorrowful with pride, gazing at it with wet eyes. ~ Ray Bradbury

He who loves his neighbor burns his heart, and the heart, like green wood, groans when it burns, and distills itself in tears. There is no point in taking opium; it is better to put salt and vinegar in the soul's wound, for if you fall asleep and no longer feel the pain, then you no longer exist. And the point is to exist. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Now,' cried the fiend, 'follow me! You must understand that I cannot get out by the great gate - the porter will not suffer that. Once here, there is no retreat. Follow me, therefore: we will just go to your house, where you shall dress yourself; for you can hardly go to a ball in your present costume - especially as it is not a bal masque. Mind and wrap yourself well up in your winding-sheet, for the nights are cold, and you may feel unpleasantly touched by it.'

As he said this, Satan laughed malignantly; and I continued silently to walk after him.

'I am sure,' continued he, 'that, in spite of the service I am doing you, you do not yet like me. You are always thus, you men - ungrateful to your friends. Not that I blame ingratitude; it is a vice upon which I pride myself, since I invented it myself; and I must say, that it is one most in vogue. But I do wish to see you a little more merry - it is the only thing I ask of you.'

I answered not, but still followed my guide, white as a statue, and as cold. I was silent; but, at the pauses in the fiend's voice, I could hear my teeth chatter against each other, and my bones rattle in my body. ("The Dead Man's Story") ~ James Hain Friswell

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside-

The diaries of grief,
the tounge-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love
are no less real.
For having passed unsaid
What we conceal
Is always more
than we dare confide.
Think of the letters
we write our dead. ~ Dana Gioia

Fate is the magnetic pull of our souls toward the people, places, and things we belong with. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

To forget would mean the things we never knew
had never waited to be known, never waited
to be forgotten, had never been; waiting
beneath the long dead stars
in time. . . ~ John Daniel Thieme

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

May the dead body of agony remain asleep
resting its head on a pillow of flowers. ~ Suman Pokhrel

The science fiction writer cuts out her heart. It is a thousand hearts. It is all the hearts she will ever have. It is her only child's dead heart. It is the heart of herself when she is old and nothing she ever wrote can be revised again. It is a heart that says with its wet beating mouth: Time is the same thing as light. Both arrive long after they began, bearing sad messages. How lovely you are. I love you.
The science fiction writer steals her heart from herself to bring it into the light. She escapes her old heart through a smoke hole and becomes a self-referencing system of imperfect, but elegant, memory. She sews up her heart into her own leg and gives birth to it twenty years later on the long highway to Ohio. The heat of herself dividing echoes forward and back, and she accretes, bursts, and begins again the long process of her own super-compression until her heart is an egg containing everything. She eats of her heart and knows she is naked. She throws her heart into the abyss and it falls a long way, winking like a red star. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

The tree was so old, and stood there so alone, that his childish heart had been filled with compassion; if no one else on the farm gave it a thought, he would at least do his best to, even though he suspected that his child's words and child's deeds didn't make much difference. It had stood there before he was born, and would be standing there after he was dead, but perhaps, even so, it was pleased that he stroked its bark every time he passed, and sometimes, when he was sure he wasn't observed, even pressed his cheek against it. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you're dead? ~ Audrey Niffenegger

So when you see an old lady wearing a beehive, it's because it's from a time when she was most happy. I think that's true about music as well. There is a period from 1986 to 1996 where it's impossible to articulate the impact that new music had on my life. There was so much stuff coming out during that time that I was obsessed with, like the Dead Kennedys and the Breeders. It isn't as simple as saying that's when I was happiest, but it was a time when music had an emotional impact on me. When I was putting up the 43 Folders site, I had The Meadowlands by The Wrens on repeat for over a week and it became like a good friend. ~ Anonymous

Cotton rows crisscross the world
And dead-tired nights of yearning
Thunderbolts on leather strops
And all my body burning
Sugar cane reach up to God
And every baby crying
Shame a blanket of my night
And all my days are dying ~ Maya Angelou

Their souls are usually heavy and managerial. ~ Charles Baxter

I walked up the ramp and stood in the van, trying to decide where to begin my inspection of the concealed words whose bones were molded together by men to make either an awesome vision of truth that would guard any door of the mind, or a creature that would stand for a while, deceptively whole, then collapse, scattering across the threshold the dry dead bones that did not even burst into flame at their friction one with the other. ~ Janet Frame

The land is in the bones. The earth will be packed with sinful souls. And there will still walk a body that will not be willing to change for the better. ~ Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take no care to stop them. ~ Alasdair Gray

It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something ... the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe. ~ Jo Nesbo

Well, at first the band were simply called Horsepower, but a lot of people thought that was something to do with heroin. That really pissed me off, so I decided to put something in front of it to distract them. I got '16' from a traditional American folk song, where a man is singing about his dead wife and 16 black horses are pulling her casket up to the cemetery. I liked the image of 16 working horses. ~ David Eugene Edwards

People are heavy when they're dead. I also nearly ralphed every time I caught a glimpse of the skin flap flapping, and I'd seen enough CSI to know that my stomach contents could be used to link me to the site. ~ Nicole Peeler

There was never anybody before you," she said. "I just wanted to say that. And when I did what I do, and it opened a crack in me like it did last night, there was nobody there to hold on to me. I didn't want anyone to hold on to me. Until you. And I got through and I got by, and it was okay. But I think, maybe, if I'd just kept getting through and getting by, I'd have come to a point where I couldn't do it anymore. And if I couldn't do it anymore, it'd be the end of me, Roarke. So when you hold on to me, You're helping me stand up, one more time. And the dead, you're standing for them, too. I just wanted to say that." She went out quickly, and left him staring at her. ~ J.D. Robb

Criticism is like dissecting a dead frog," Caleb said when the book was published. "They're examining all the guts and shit and organs, when the thing that really matters, whatever it was that animated the body, has long since left. It does nothing for the art. ~ Kevin Wilson

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light. ~ Jean Baudrillard

You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask. ~ Italo Calvino

He studied the warehouse door. "I wouldn't put it past Lorcan to return the favor you dealt him tonight. He forgets and forgives even less easily than you do. Especially when someone threatens to cut off his manhood." "At least I said it would be a big mistake," she said with a fiendish grin. "I was tempted to say 'little.'" Rowan laughed, his eyes dancing. "Then you definitely would have been dead. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we're born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy. ~ Brandi Carlile

If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly. ~ Naomi Novik

Beauty salons, like churches, are places where people tend to unburden themselves and bare their souls. ~ Sarah Weeks