Death Row Quotes

Rosa Parks turned to me sweetly and asked, 'Now, Bryan, tell me who you are and what you're doing.' I looked at Ms. Carr to see if I had permission to speak, and she smiled and nodded at me. I then gave Ms. Parks my rap. 'Yes, ma'am. Well, I have a law project called the Equal Justice Initiative, and we're trying to help people on death row. We're trying to stop the death penalty, actually. We're trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who've been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice...Ms. Parks leaned back smiling. 'Ooooh, honey, all that's going to make you tired, tired, tired.' We all laughed. I looked down, a little embarrassed. Then Ms. Carr leaned forward and put her finger in my face and talked o me just like my grandmother used to talk to me. She said, 'That's why you've got to be brave, brave, brave.' All three women nodded in silent agreement and for just a little while, they made me feel like a young prince. ~ Bryan Stevenson

Death row groupies mystify me. These women spend their lives visiting the condemned religiously, writing them daily, falling in love with them, and marrying them if they can. For some women, perhaps, condemned killers have that special aura or sex appeal. Apparently it gratifies their sense of romance or martyrdom. ~ Robert Blecker

If Arnold is elected, you know who I'd feel sorry for? The people on death row. Imagine, you're about to be executed, the governor calls, you think it's your reprieve, and you hear 'Hasta la vista, baby.' ~ Jay Leno

There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't. ~ Neil Gaiman

One wrong move, one bad rumor, one mistake, and it's social death row. I'm the latest to be sentenced. Move out of the way, everyone. Dead girl walking.
-Riley ~ Dawn Klehr

Most of the people on Death Row are here for no other reason than that their case got more publicity than others. The difference between a man receiving a prison sentence and a man receiving a death sentence could be decided by nothing more than a slow news day. ~ Damien Echols

USA Today reports that the number of death row executions this year has hit a 35-year low. They attribute that to DNA evidence clearing more people and the fact that Rick Perry has been on the road campaigning. ~ Jay Leno

You're old. You're senile. You're too calm about this. Something must be wrong ... "
"Wonderful. I'll pull out my hair and chase butterflies around the room. ~ John Grisham

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders. ~ Thomas Sowell

Capital punishment? It makes no sense as a policy: It's not a deterrent, and economically it's a disaster. It's very clear that there are innocent people on death row. And if I put an innocent person to death, that's murder. ~ Tony Goldwyn

Only those who will love longer than they expected to can truly love pecan pie, which doesn't explain its status as death rows most requested last dessert, or why chopped pecans, corn syrup, directions from the Karo bottle's cherry-red side are what mercy taste like to some. But there you have it. ~ Kate Lebo

We have shot, hanged, gassed, electrocuted, and lethally injected hundreds of people to carry out legally sanctioned executions. Thousands more await their execution on death row. Some states have no minimum age for prosecuting children as adults; we've sent a quarter million kids to adult jails and prisons to serve long prison terms, some under the age of twelve. For years, we've been the only country in the world that condemns children to life imprisonment without parole; nearly three thousand juveniles have been sentenced to die in prison. ~ Bryan Stevenson

People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world! ~ Eddie Vedder

Our capitol punishment system is haunted by the demon of error- error in determining guilt, error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die ... The legislation couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. I won't stand for it. I had to act ... I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates. ~ George Ryan

I can't wait to have my mouth on you again. I'm gonna eat you like I'm on death row and you're my last goddamned meal. ~ Helena Hunting

No man is your friend
No man is your enemy
Every man is your teacher"
By a prisoner-Ronald Lee Sanford, on death row who killed 2 people at 13 years old for $5 ~ Ronald Lee Sanford

I've worked in the prison system, on death row and maximum security. I did that work for six years. I've worked with some of the most difficult people in our society. Buddhism was accessible and helpful for these individuals. ~ Joan Halifax

Alyque and his team began a public interest ad campaign (for which Lintas had become famous) to raise aid for drought stricken Rajasthan and raised substantial assistance. A death row convict wrote to me from his cell. In the epochal Express style that always encouraged the reporter, the editors ran the story on the front page. ~ Teesta Setalvad

What you do to these men on California's Death Row, you do to God. ~ Mother Teresa

If death row is a sharp punishment, life without parole can be an endless torture. ~ Rene Denfeld

At this very moment we are breathing the same air that once was Marco Polo's last breath. And we're also breathing the same air that was Mozart's first breath as a baby.
you're also breathing air that's probably been queefed by Mata Hari, Cleopatra and Marilyn Monroe, which either way you look at it is pretty cool.
So, while we're breathing in the same molecules as Jesus, we're also breathing in the same air as Pontius Pilot, Attila the Hun and an inmate on Death Row in San Quentin State Prison. We are linked to every other life form that has ever been on this planet because we literally breathe the same air. ~ Karl Wiggins

Any rap record from 1989 to 1999, besides [ones on] Death Row, we did promotions for it. We had our hand in everything. ~ Steve Rifkind

He made a mistake, one that would send him to death row and eventually cost him his freedom for life. ~ John Grisham

There's no racism on death row. ~ Anthony Ray Hinton

Prison is designed to separate, isolate, and alienate you from everyone and everything. You're not allowed to do so much as touch your spouse, your parents, your children. The system does everything within its power to sever any physical or emotional links you have to anyone in the outside world. They want your children to grow up without ever knowing you.They want your spouse to forget your face and start a new life. They want you to sit alone, grieving, in a concrete box, unable even to say your last farewell at a parent's funeral. ~ Damien Echols

To accept the environmentalist argument that the suffering of individual animals is inconsequential compared to the ozone layer, we must be willing to admit that the sufferings of minority groups, raped women, battered wives, abused children, people sitting on death row, and our loved ones are small potatoes beneath the hole in the sky. To worry about any of them is, in effect, to miniaturize the big picture to portraits of battered puppy dogs. ~ Karen Davis

I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high. ~ Scott Turow

Why, then you go on to Death Row at state prison and just
enjoy all that good food until it's time to ride the lightning. It won't be
long. ~ Stephen King

It was like being a prisoner on death row who survives month after month and becomes accustomed to the life, while he registers with an objective eye the horror of the new arrivals: registers it with the same numbness tha he brings to the murders and deaths themselves. All survivor literature talks about this numbness, in which life's functions are reduced to minimum, behavior becomes completely selfish and indifferent to others, and gassing and burning are everyday occurences. In the rare accounts by perpetrators , too, the gas chambers and ovens become ordinary scenary, the perpetrators reduced to their few functions and exhibiting a mental paralysis and indifference, a dullness that makes them seem drugged or drunk. ~ Bernhard Schlink

Which means that you stand a greater chance of dying while dealing crack in a Chicago housing project than you do while sitting on death row in Texas. ~ Anonymous

The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates. ~ John McLaughlin

I know you white girls are all touchy feely, but, could you not? I feel like I'm a felon on death row every time you touch me. It's like, damn, can I get a last meal at least before getting hooked up to the electric machine? ~ Rebecca Espinoza

But I was a polite kid, so I went. Even the wildest and toughest of us kids, several of whom ended up in prison and one on death row, would be accounted polite by today's standards. ~ Trevanian

So, what do you do, Ellie? he asked. Well, previously, I held a position on death row, but lately I've been a vampire's plaything. Soon I'll be sacrificed so the Soul Reaper and the Enemy of Old can make babies. ~ Kresley Cole

The nice thing about money is that you can do good things with it. I still feel like if something needs to be done or we need to raise money for someone on death row, we can find ways to do it. ~ Eddie Vedder

It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined. ~ William J. Brennan

I vote Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive and comfy. ~ David Letterman

Specialists debated whether to pull the plug, but Texas only executes people on death row, not when they're brain-dead, because it might mean culling most of their politicians. ~ Michael Robotham

We're trying to help people on death row. We're trying yo stop the death penalty, actually. We're trying to do something about prison conditions and excessive punishment. We want to free people who've been wrongly convicted. We want to end unfair sentences in criminal cases and stop racial bias in criminal justice. We're trying to help the poor and do something about indigent defense and the fact that people don't get the legal help they need. We're trying to help people who are mentally ill. We're trying to stop them from putting children in adult jails and prisons. We're trying to do something about the poverty and hopelessness that dominates poor communities. We want to see more diversity in decision-makingroles in the justice system. We're trying to educate people about racial history and the need for racial justice. We're trying to confront abuse of power by police and prosecutors. ~ Bryan Stevenson

Soldiers in the heat of battle; death-row prisoners; explorers stranded in deserts, jungles, on mountaintops; anyone sick or lost or just tired and bewildered: we all wanted our mothers. ~ Marisa De Los Santos

More than 100 people have been sent to death row who were later exonerated because they weren't guilty or fairly tried. Most criminal defendants do not get adequate representation because there are not enough public defenders to represent them. There is a lot that is wrong. ~ John Grisham

But then again, we're all on death row, aren't we? Most of us just don't know it. ~ Lisa Unger

The drink? Yes, I've had tough times in my life, especially the last year, regarding my ex-wife, my kids, I nearly broke my neck, I was on death row with pneumonia. ~ Paul Gascoigne

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. ~ Antonin Scalia

I was in my late twenties and about to start my fourth year at the SPDC when I met Walter McMillian. His case was one of the flood of cases I'd found myself frantically working on after learning of a growing crisis in Alabama. The state had nearly a hundred people on death row as well as the fastest-growing condemned population in the country, but it also had no public defender system, which meant that large numbers of death row prisoners had no legal representation of any kind. ~ Bryan Stevenson

A relationship is not a death row
pardon. Being alone is not the end.
Your own head is a beautiful place
to visit. The architecture of your
thoughts deserves recognition for
its vast complexity and beauty. ~ Emm Roy

Nobody knew anyone else's private world. In the end, they were all alone as inmates on death row, side by side. Sometimes you could get a look at one another with a little pocket mirror, cell to cell, but that was all. ~ Janet Fitch

I watch CNN every night, but never afterward think much about anything I see--even the election, as stupid as it is. I've come to loathe most sports, which I used to love--a loss I attribute to having seen the same thing over and over again too many times. Only death-row stories and sumo wrestling (narrated in Japanese) will keep me at the TV longer than ten minutes. My bedside table, as I've said, has novels and biographies I've read thirty pages into but can't tell you much about. ~ Richard Ford

A few years after you disappeared, a postal worker named Ben Carver was sentenced to death for murdering six young men. (He is a homosexual, which, according to Huckleberry, means he is not attracted to murdering young women.) Rumors have it that Carver cannibalized some of his victims, but there was never a trial, so the more salacious details were not made public. I found Carver's name in the sheriff's file ten months ago, the fifth anniversary of your disappearance. The letter was written on Georgia Department of Corrections stationery and signed by the warden. He was informing the sheriff that Ben Carver, a death row inmate, had mentioned to one of the prison guards that he might have some information pertaining to your disappearance. ~ Karin Slaughter

Advice? I don't have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you're writing, you're a writer. Write like you're a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there's no chance for a pardon. Write like you're clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you've got just one last thing to say, like you're a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God's sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don't. Who knows, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to. ~ Alan W. Watts

Teresa Lewis, the only woman on death row in Virginia, says she doesn't deserve the death penalty because she only hired the killers of her husband and stepson, she didn't actually pull the trigger herself. You know, she has a point. I think we should let her be able to hire the person who executes her, and not do yourself in! How's that, doll? Yeah! Get it over with quick, maybe Charlize Theron will sign up to play you. ~ Dennis Miller

Women are attracted to artists, of course, as they are to doctors and prisoners on death row. The powerful and the vulnerable. If you want to continue to get laid, particularly as you get older, that's where to head, boy. ~ Hanif Kureishi

Someone asked me if I would like to write a man on death row, be a pen pal, and I was like, sure. I volunteered. I had been in a place in my life - a relationship had ended; my parents were getting elderly - I was kind of adrift. The name that was given to me, just randomly, was Todd Willingham. And he wrote me a letter, and in this letter, he thanked me for writing him and [said that] if I would like to visit, he would put me on his visitor list ... I was just really struck by the letter from Todd. It was very polite; it was very kind. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Bass! How low can you go?
Death row ... what a brother know.
Once again, back is the incredible,
The rhyme animal, the uncannable "D!"
Public Enemy Number One.
Five-O said, "Freeze!" and I got numb.
Can I tell 'em that I really never had a gun?
But it's the wax that the Terminator X spun. ~ Chuck D

Everyone on Earth is on Death Row until they find a way out. It's not so hard to find the way out. The problem is wanting to. ~ Donna Goddard

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive. ~ John Grisham

Death row is a place for broken people
just like Tom Hanks.
They can't be fixed,
warped all out of shape
by the cracks and splinters inside them.

And what else can you do with stuff that's broken
except throw it in the trash?

Right? ~ Sarah Crossan

Jealousy can instigate the cruellest act, or more to the point, hatred can. Miss Bennett was the one who found Nathan lying at the bottom of the stairs in the cellar, said he must have slipped or something, especially with one leg being so much weaker than the other. They as good people never would have suspected their own daughter of pushing him. That she never showed emotion over her brother's death was put down to trauma. I could see what they could not - a child incapable of any kind of feeling apart from selfishness. I can still picture him now, lying on his stomach, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes glazed like one of Rhiannon's dolls. She was then about seven years old with the face of an angel and a nature as cruel as anyone on death row. ~ Tami Egonu

The cells of death row are filled with guys who had nothing to hide. ~ Kenneth Eade

We're all on death row, ultimately. Are you so stupid that don't see that? Sure, you kids in here, as enemies of the system, will assuredly die earlier than most. As well you should. But all of us everywhere have a one-way ticket to death. ~ James Patterson

Although I love all the great foods of the world, my death row meal would have to be cooked for me by my mother and grandmother (they live together and this happens on most Sundays). More than satisfy our hunger, these dinners nurture the soul. ~ Joe Bastianich

Every one thinks he's a good person, even those on Death Row. ~ Dale Carnegie

If you believe in God, believe in Death Row East. ~ Tupac Shakur

People who are detained (held in prison) are locked up by their past, and because you are locked up by your past you are held hostage by your yesterdays. And if you are held hostage by your yesterdays, you cannot see your tomorrows. -- Rev. Earl Smith, author, Death Row Chaplain, creator of IMPACT (Incarcerated Men Putting Away Childish Things) ~ Rev. Earl Smith

I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment ... We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated. ~ John Paul Stevens

There's a great documentary on Tupac called 'Resurrection' about the last few years of Tupac's life and how he transformed. And, ironically, how this East Coast rapper became this West Coast icon, back when all that Death Row/Sean Combs stuff was going on. ~ Marco Rubio

Why do they bother with a suicide watch when someone is on death row? "Keep an eye on this guy. We're gonna kill him, and we don't want him to hurt himself." ~ George Carlin

It seems there are no rich on death row. ~ Charles Grodin

We've sent 130 men to death row to be executed in this country, at least 130 that we know of, who have later have been exonerated because they were either innocent, or they were not fairly tried. That's 130 people that we've locked down on death row. And they've spent years there. ~ John Grisham

Suge is the boss of Death Row, the don, you understand? But im the underboss, the capo. That's my job to what's best for Death Row ~ Tupac Shakur

Maud in the light of her youth and her grace,
Singing of Death, and of Honor that cannot die,
Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean,
And myself so languid and base. ~ Alfred Tennyson

People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to. ~ John Green

I became very obsessed with death, and the idea that you never know when death will arrive, so one has to do as much as possible all the time to get the most out of life. That would be a motivating force. ~ Madonna Ciccone

From the time one gets married he tries to improve his wife, but neither of the two improves till death. Instead, if you would have tried to cut vegetables, it would have been done (with success.) So do not try to improve the wife. She may try to improve us [men] but we should not try to reform them. ~ Dada Bhagwan

[Philip's death was] beyond comparison the most afflicting of my life ... He was truly a fine youth. But why should I repine? It was the will of heaven and he is now out of the reach of the seductions and calamities of a world full of folly, full of vice, full of danger, of least value in proportion as it is best known. I firmly trust also that he has safely reached the haven of eternal repose and felicity. (Alexander Hamilton letter to Benjamin Rush about the death of his 19-year old son from mortal wounds inflicted from a duel.) ~ Ron Chernow

For most people, art is only valuable if other people say it is; and artists are only worthwhile if they are either rich and famous, or dead. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

The leaves of her stone book have written on their pages, not merely the records of death, but likewise of pain. ~ A Journeyman

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Words written in red, circled by Will. And lived.
"Jesus, I've listened to the lies too long. They've filled my head and led me on a long chase of things that don't matter. I bought into what Satan was feeding me until barely recognized my own face in the mirror. It took Will's death and Lucy's leaving to show me where my priorities should be.
I want to live for you.
I just ... want to live. ~ Jenny B. Jones

My dying tutor told me that he would like to live till I had been a poet, but Death was much of Mob as I could master-then-And when far afterward-a sudden light on Orchards, or a new fashion in the wind troubled my attention- I felt a palsy, here- the Verses just relieve- (174) ~ Emily Dickinson

Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak-
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
Give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
Give it as much
As you know is spread round you from
Midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
See how things all come alive-
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
The star wants to descend on:
So as to swim down beliow, down here
Where it sees itself shimmer:in the swell
Of wandering words. ~ Paul Celan

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

An interesting thing happened today," she said, giving me just enough time to get the word "hi" out of my mouth. "I opened the front door and there was a man on my doorstep. A big man. A very big, very black man."

"Rachel - "

"You said it would be discreet. His T–shirt had the words 'Klan Killer' written on the front."

"I - "

"And do you know what he said?"

I waited.

"He handed me a note from Louis and told me he was lactose intolerant. That was it. Note. Lactose intolerant. Nothing else. He's coming to the reading with me. It was all I could do to get him to change his T–shirt. The new one reads 'Black Death.' I'm going to tell people it's a rap band. Do you think it's a rap band?"

I figured it was probably his occupation, but I didn't say that. Instead, I said the only thing I could think of to say.

"Maybe you'd better buy some soy milk."

She hung up without saying good–bye. ~ John Connolly

In Christ we see a maturity of love that flowers in self-sacrifice and forgiveness; a maturity of power that never swerves from the ideal of service; a maturity of goodness that overcomes every temptation, and, of course, we see the ultimate victory of life over death itself. ~ Vincent Nichols

Birth was the death of me ~ Samuel Beckett

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall. ~ Aysha Taryam

I used mythology to tell the story [in Living with Love], with the story of the minotaur and the matador and fighting and fighting for love and the color red and flowers and horns and death and naked men. You know, the important things in life. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Never judge a person how he died, but how he lived. ~ Rudolf Jerome Ragay

The fact that Jesus weeps and that he is moved in spirit and troubled contrasts remarkably with the dominant culture. That is not the way of power, and it is scarcely the way among those who intend to maintain firm social control. But in [John 11:33-35] Jesus is engaged not in social control but in dismantling the power of death, and he does so by submitting himself to the pain and grief present in the situation, the very pain and grief that the dominant society must deny. ~ Walter Brueggemann

Love is the first feeling we felt since birth and the last thing will need in Death. ~ Ricardo Luis Ivan I Geronimo

Live each day as if it is your last. Most days you will be wrong. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

One hand planted on the top rail, slick from a recent rain, I swung my legs sideways, up and over. Home free.
Until my bottom foot clipped the post, and I spun as if caught in a crocodile's death roll.
Good news? The spongy forest floor cushioned my fall.
Bad news? Momentum slammed my torso into a tree trunk. Couldn't breathe.
But good news again. I'd rolled under a fat, bushy pine, which, along with the fading twilight, concealed my position. I heard the beast fly overhead in pursuit, taking out a few treetops on its way by.
Yeah, that was my plan all along. Man, I'm good. Except my body. It hurt. ~ A&E Kirk

QUESTLOVE: How do you get that back? Does being downtrodden make us spiritual again?

WEST: I don't think it's just a matter of the material conditions; it's a matter of the choices that we make. Our ancestors could have chosen forms of spiritual suicide and spiritual blackout, but they decided not to, even in the midst of slavery, even in the midst of Jim Crow. Great-great grandma could have chosen to commit suicide. But she said no, her kids said no. The love said no. "I choose to be on the love train, even under slave-like conditions." That's a choice we make. All we have had as a people, historically - amid the levels of hatred, the social death of slavery, the civic death of Jim Crow, the psychological death of hating one's self, the spiritual death of giving up and selling out and caving in - all we have is a subversive memory, personal integrity, and courageous witness in the fight for justice. That's all we've got. You do away with the memory, and people can't hear the voice of a Glenn Jones or, my favorite, Gerald Levert. With no memory, you get very little artistic integrity, just a matter of stimulating people for the market, and then no creative witness. ~ Cornel West

There was no room in their lives for the suggestive or ambiguous any more. That was one of the biggest casualties of the war: the grey area. There was warmth and cold, being full and being hungry, friends and enemies – but in between, nothing of any real importance. And then there was life and death. ~ Eva Nour

Instead of joyfully looking forward to my birth, my mother began systematically preparing for her own death. She was fatalistic. ~ Lorna Luft

To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.
~ David Bowie

The earth will always be the same - only cities and history will change, even nations will change, governments and governors will go, the things made by men's hands will go, buildings will always crumble - only the earth will remain the same, there will always be men on the earth in the morning, there will always be the things made by God's hands - and all this history of cities and congress now will go, all modern history is only a littering Babylon smoking under the sun, delaying the day when men again will have to return to earth, to the earth of life and God - ~ Jack Kerouac

He said that death marks places like a dog marking its territory. Some people can sense it right away, while others simply start to feel uncomfortable after a time. Every stay in any place betrays the quiet ubiquitousness of the dead. As he said:
'At first you always see what's alive and vibrant. You're delighted by nature, by the local church painted in different colours, by the smells and all that. But the longer you're in a place, the more the charm of those things fades. You wonder who lived here before you came to this home and this room, whose things these are, who scratched the wall above the bed and what tree the sills were cut from. Whose hands built the elaborately decorated fireplace, paved the courtyard? And where are they now? In what form? Whose idea led to these paths around the pond and who had the idea of planting a willow out the window? All the houses, avenues, parks, gardens and streets are permeated with the deaths of others. Once you start feeling this, something starts to pull you elsewhere, you start to think it's time to move on.'
He added that when we are in motion, there's no time for such idle meditations. Which is why to people on trips everything seems new and clean, virginal, and, in some sense, immortal. ~ Olga Tokarczuk

He often lying broad awake...hath heard time flowing in the middle of the night,
And all things creeping to a day of doom.
How could ye know him? Ye were yet within
The narrower circle; he had wellnigh reached
The last, which with a region of white flame,
Pure without heat, into a larger air
Upburning, and an ether of black blue,
Investeth and ingirds all other lives. ~ Alfred Tennyson

Taggle looked up at her, his amber eyes as deep as the loneliness Kate had felt before he became her friend.
"The traditional thing," he said slowly, "involves the river and a sack. ~ Erin Bow

Of all living things, only humans consciously anticipate death; the consequent need to choose how to behave in its face - to worry about how to die - distinguishes us from other animals. The need to manage death is the particular lot of humanity. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust