Death Rattle Quotes

Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives - families, countries, gods - the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom - when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications - the self. ~ Thomas Ligotti

She look me over from head to foot. Then she cackle. Sound like a death rattle. You sure is ugly, she say, like she ain't believed it. ~ Alice Walker

Ariel spoke Tybalt's line: "'Have at thee, coward!'"
"Save yer breath for a pretty death rattle. ~ Lisa Mantchev

The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom. ~ Georg Buchner

The words came from him like a sob, a hoarse sound like the death rattle of a dying man; it seemed indeed like the agony of death when the father's love was powerless. ~ Honore De Balzac

Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat. ~ Henry George Bohn

The only sound I'd like to hear from a Motivational Speaker is a death rattle ~ Dean Cavanagh

As far as plans went, it was like facing the zombie apocalypse with a nail file and a bag of Skittles. It might work, but chances were good that I'd die a horrible, painful death.
At least the end would be filled with fruity, candy goodness. And for my dramatic death scene I could whisper, in a creepy, quivery death rattle, taste the rainbow. Boy would those zombies be confused. ~ E.J. Stevens

My last album as J. Tillman, 'Singing Ax,' that was really a premeditated death rattle of the aesthetic precedent I had set. I realized I wasn't creating spontaneously; I was enforcing all these parameters. I was too self-loathing or something, and there was this obvious dissonance between my conversational voice and creative voice. ~ J. Tillman

The guard looked down at the scarlet bloodstains blooming on his chest. He appeared to think of something that he needed to say, but as his lips began to form the words, his knees gave up the strain of supporting his ruined bulk. He collapsed to the floor, his throat issuing a final sound like a bubbling casserole. ~ R.D. Ronald

Hearing, they say, is one of the last senses to go. My mother smiled. I tearfully asked her, "Mommy, can you see heaven?" She smiled again. Then she was gone. There was no death rattle, no sudden in-breath or out-breath. She simply stopped breathing. She smiled and slipped away. Smiling while dying is apparently not that unusual. The body tries to produce a state of euphoria to usher us out. It releases the same kinds of neurochemicals, dopamine and serotonin, that flood our brains as we are falling in love. ~ Edwidge Danticat

These passions of soul, these conflicts so fierce, will cease, and be repressed by the casting of a little dust. ~ Virgil

We aren't haunted by the dead, but by the impossible reach of history. By how unknowable these others are to us, how unfathomable we'd be to them. ~ Rebecca Makkai

I'd be interested in finding out if there is a light you walk into, and if you do meet people from your life and walk hand in hand with Jesus. I would hate for my death to be tragic: I'd like to be old when it happens. But hopefully a young death is unlikely. ~ Brian Molko

Shut your eyes," said Miss Tanner.
"Oh no," said Miranda, "for then I see worse things ... ~ Katherine Anne Porter

I was in favour of the death penalty, and disposed to regard abolitionists as people whose hearts were bigger than their heads. Four years of close study of the subject gradually dispelled that feeling. In the end I became convinced that the abolitionists were right in their conclusions ... and that far from the sentimental approach leading into their camp and the rational one into that of the supporters, it was the other way about. ~ Ernest Gowers

Wherever you look there is so much loss and folly to contemplate. ~ Rosie Thomas

It's telling yourself that you want the things that society tells you you should want. women thikn that survival depends on conformity. but for some women, conformity is death. it's a death to the soul. the soul, "she said, "is a precious thing. when you live a lie, you damage the soul. ~ Candace Bushnell

If you just do a Google search and type in 'smoking' or 'lung cancer', you will be barraged with never ending facts and numbers, like how one in every three Americans is affected by lung disease and how COPD is the third leading cause of death and if you get lung cancer the odds are 95% that you will die. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler

At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains [heaven]. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed. ~ C.S. Lewis

We thought to weep, but sing for joy instead,
Full of the grateful peace
That follows her release;
For nothing but the weary dust lies dead. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Come to believe that the fear of death is always greatest in those who feel that they have not lived their life fully. A good working formula is: the more unlived life, or unrealized potential, the greater one's death anxiety. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

You never know what life means till you die; even throughout life, tis death that makes life live. ~ Robert Browning

I am not afraid of death." He pressed a kiss into her palm, the slow, sensual act weakening her knees. "I am afraid of losing you. ~ Juliette Cross

Most people imagine that a man suffers because out of the blue, Death snatches away the woman he loves. But his real suffering is less futile; it comes from the discovery that grief, too, cannot last. Even grief is vanity! ~ Albert Camus

We're not out of the woods yet, people," I said, and grimaced, my eyes cheating toward the trees growing on all sides. "No pun intended. Sloane, were you being serious when you said that most of that was Demi's blood? Because I'm not quite ready to condone beating her to death." "She got a nosebleed," said Sloane, reaching forward and taking my hand in hers. Her fingers left red stains on my skin. "Sure, I had to punch her four or five times to make that happen, but nosebleeds are a normal part of being a traitorous bitch who goes over to the dark side at the first sign of trouble. ~ Seanan McGuire

Death is terrible, tho' borne on angels' wings! ~ William Blake

And just as love has two sides, so too does Death. While Ismae will serve as His mercy, I will not, for that is not how He fashioned me. Every death I have witnessed, every horror I have endured, has forged me to be who I am
Death's justice. ~ R.L. LaFevers

That doesn't make him a hero. Our country is doomed, don't you see? Our fate is death, no matter whose hands we fall into. ~ Ruta Sepetys

So many of us fail: we divorce our wives and husbands, we leave the roofs of our lovers, go once again into the lonely march, mustering our courage with work, friends, half pleasures which are not whole because they are not shared. Yet still I believe in love's possibility, in its presence on the earth; as I believe I can approach the altar on any morning of any day which may be the last and receive the touch that does not, for me, say: There is no death; but does say: In this instant I recognize, with you, that you must die. And I believe I can do this in an ordinary kitchen with an ordinary woman and five eggs. The woman sets the table She watches me beat the eggs. I scramble them in a saucepan, as my now-dead friend taught me; they stand deeper and cook softer, he said. I take our plates, spoon eggs on them, we sit and eat. She and I and the kitchen have become extraordinary; we are not simply eating; we are pausing in the march to perform an act together, we are in love; and the meal offered and received is a sacrament which says: I know you will die; I am sharing food with you; it is all I can do, and it is everything. ~ Andre Dubus

You can't pray away the gay, but you can torture a conflicted closet-case to death. ~ Dan Savage

What exactly constitutes an emergency in a modelling agency? Two girls fighting to death with a hair straightener? ~ Kate Forster

I didn't reply I didn't think I could. I felt sick, perspiring, the way you do when you stand by yourself on the brink of some vertiginous cliff, and the whole world undulates around you, and you're overcome by the tantalizing power of suicide. The death that lies within your immediate grasp. A single, easy step. ~ Beatriz Williams

xxx it feels to me that...that death is but a thunderstorm. Just wind and noise. You can't ask meaning of such a thing. Not even of your own. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

It's not what I'd want for at my funeral. When I die, I just want them to plant me somewhere warm. And then when the pretty women walk over my grave I would grab their ankles, like in that movie. ~ Neil Gaiman

The horrific cases in Ferguson, in Staten Island with the death of Eric Garner, and all across the country serve as stark reminders that we must have a say in who polices us, and how that policing is done. We must, we must, let our voices be heard on Election Day. ~ Al Sharpton

Normally death came at night, taking a person in their sleep, stopping their heart or tickling them awake, leading them to the bathroom with a splitting headache before pouncing and flooding their brain with blood. It waits in alleys and metro stops. After the sun goes down plugs are pulled by white-clad guardians and death is invited into an antiseptic room.
But in the country death comes, uninvited, during the day. It takes fishermen in their longboats. It grabs children by the ankles as they swim. In winter it calls them down a slope too steep for their budding skills, and crosses their skies at the tips. It waits along the shore where snow met ice not long ago but now, unseen by sparkling eyes, a little water touches the shore, and the skater makes a circle slightly larger than intended. Death stands in the woods with a bow and arrow at dawn and dusk. And it tugs cars off the road in broad daylight, the tires spinning furiously on ice or snow, or bright autumn leaves. ~ Louise Penny

Wept for the death of an ardent and immature love that had been unable to bring any comfort or peace to the beloved. And wept for the woman he had taken to wife with such high ideals - the woman who had just killed herself rather than face a final illness with only his arms to comfort her. Wept for his own frailty and infidelity. For his own humanness. He ~ Mary Balogh

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Our trouble isn't lack of perseverance, it's that we're not on the right road that leads to an easy death. Going ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Any day could be your last day of existence? ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Death is only scary If you make it so. ~ Iman Abukamail

Someone else told me that capitulating to my depression made me seem ungrateful because Jesus died so that I wouldn't have to suffer, but frankly Jesus seemed to have more than his fair share of bullshit in his life too. That guy got nailed to death. I bet people walking past Jesus were like, "Wow. That guy should have had more God in his life." Or maybe they just sent him those e-mails that say, "Let Go and Let God," or "God listens to knee-mail. ~ Jenny Lawson

He bit the inside of his cheek, Death purring wildy. The pleasure of her touch, even one so innocent, rocked him to the core. ~ Gena Showalter

For if there is an actual and present rule of God in the world, then it must be found, not in the conquest of visible enemies, but in the triumph of love and life, however halting and partial, over sin and death. And this is the work of the Spirit. And it is the calling of the Church. ~ Luke Timothy Johnson