Joys Of The Dead Quotes

There are no happy endings, he knew, because nothing ends; and if there were any being dispensed, a great many worthier people would be in line for them long before Michael and Laura and himself. But the happiness of the unworthy and the happiness of the so-so is as fragile and self-centered and dear as the happiness of the righteous and the worthy; and the happiness of the living is no less short and desperate and forgotten than the joys of the dead. ~ Peter S. Beagle

There are immeasurable star misty aeons of universes more numerous than the sands in all the galaxies, multiplied by a billion lightyears of multiplication, in fact if I were to go on you'd be scared and couldn't comprehend and you'd despair so much you'd drop dead,' that's what he just about said in one of those sutras
~ Jack Kerouac

Liberalism is dead, so dead that Democrats have all become moderate Republicans, and the heavy hand of Big Government is now limp and damp and trembly. ~ Garrison Keillor

Fire!
Your nose ignites,
flameless kerosene
(and, some say, Drano)
laced with ephedrine
you want to cry
powdered demons bite
through cartilage and sinuses,
take dead aim at your
brain, jump inside
want to scream
troops of tapping feet
fall into rhythm,
marking time, right
between your eyes
get the urge to dance
louder, louder, ultra
gray-matter power,
shock waves of energy
mushroom inside your head
you want to let go
detonate,
annihilate barriers,
bring down the walls,
unleashing floodwaters,
freeing long-captive dreams
to ride the current
through
arteries and capillaries,
pulsing, rushing,
raging torrents
pounding against your heart
sweeping you away ~ Ellen Hopkins

In the ordinary, everyday understandings of the words involved, to say that someone survived death is to contradict yourself; while to assert that all of us live forever is to assert a manifest falsehood, the flat contrary of a universally known truth: namely, the truth that all human beings are mortal. For when, after some disaster, the 'dead' and the 'survivors' have both been listed, what logical space remains for a third category? ~ Antony Flew

They are paper cutouts rather than people, Pram thought. They are shadows with black dots for eyes and grim lines for mouths. They almost resemble the dead, but not quite. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Life with you was lovely - and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink 'v' in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering 'l.' Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. ~ D.H. Lawrence

When writing, there are some scenes that are emotionally overwhelming. They completely overcome the author, and only when they do this can they cause a similar reaction in the reader.

Through this, the author gets to experience multiple lives. If a character's life flashes before their eyes, it flashes before the author's eyes too, and he or she remembers it as his or her own.

With reading, we get to live other lives vicariously, and this is doubly so with writing. It is like a lucid dream, where we guide the outcome. In this, we don't merely write *about* a character -- we momentarily *become* them, and walk as they walk, think as they think, and do as they do. When we return to our own life, we might return a little shaken, likely a little stronger, hopefully a little wiser.

What is certain is that we return better, because experiencing the lives of others makes us understand their aims and dreams, their fears and foils, the challenges and difficulties, and joys and triumphs, that they face. It helps us grow and empathise, and see all the little pictures that make up the bigger one we see from the omniscience of the narrator. ~ Dean F. Wilson

Nobody has ever come back from the dead, and there is significant evidence that near death experiences are the product of brain activity that, while in an unconscious state, consist of perceptions that are just not reliable. ~ Al Stefanelli

You've won," Jack said softly. He looked at Mimi with such fiery hatred that she almost cowered at his words. But she was no weakling. She was Azrael, and Azrael did not cower, not even to Abbadon.
"I've won nothing," Mimi replied coldly. "Please remember that almost all of the Elders are dead, that the
Dark Prince is ascendant, and what is left of the Conclave is being led by a broken man who used to be the strongest of us all. And yet all you seem to care about, my darling, is that you no longer get to play with your little love toy."
Instead of answering her, Jack flew across the room and slapped her hard across the face, sending her
crashing to the floor. But before he could wield another blow, Mimi leaped up and slammed him against the window, knocking him completely out of breath.
"Is this what you want?" she hissed as she lifted him up by his shirt collar, his face turning a ghastly shade of red.
"Don't let me destroy you," he sneered.
"Just try, my sweet."
Jack twisted out of her grasp and flipped her over, kicking her down the length of the room. She sprung up with her hands clenched, her nails sharp as claws, and fangs bared. They met halfway in the air, and Jack put a hand on her throat and began to squeeze. But she scratched at his eyes and wrenched her body so that she was rolling on top of him, her sword at his throat, with the upper hand.
SUBMIT. Mimi sent.
NEVER. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

According to his diary he worked hard and without scruple to discover what he could on his own. Of course, in principle I have no objection to using human subjects, as long as they are already dead," she adds. "Have you heard of the anatomy theatre? It is where the medical school's dissections are performed. They use bears, monkeys, dogs, and human corpses too, when the weather is cool enough. The students have been known to kidnap a body the night before its dissection, dress it up, and take it for a gondola ride down the canal. ~ Maryrose Wood

I hope each of us owns the facts of her or his own life," Hughes wrote in a letter to the Independent in April, 1989, when he had been goaded by a particularly intrusive article. But, of course, as everyone knows who has ever heard a piece of gossip, we do not "own" the facts of our lives at all. This ownership passes out of our hands at birth, at the moment we are first observed.
The organs of publicity that have proliferated in our time are only an extension and a magnification of society's fundamental and incorrigible nosiness. Our business is everybody's business, should anybody wish to make it so. The concept of privacy is a sort of screen to hide the fact that almost none is possible in a social universe. In any struggle between the public's inviolable right to be diverted and an individual's wish to be left alone, the public almost always prevails. After we are dead, the pretense that we may somehow be protected against the world's careless malice is abandoned. The branch of the law that putatively protects our good name against libel and slander withdraws from us indifferently. The dead cannot be libelled or slandered. They are without legal recourse. ~ Janet Malcolm

Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear the voice that says, "You are my beloved. On you my favor rests," the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam. The same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love wherever it is heard. When I hear that voice, I know that I am home with God and have nothing to fear. As the beloved of my heavenly Father, "I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear." As the beloved I can "cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils." Having "received without charge," I can "give without charge." As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness. As the Beloved I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.
Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that h ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down. ~ Diane Setterfield

Finding a woman like that amidst the herd of half-feeling, half-caring, half-responding, females in our society of 1860's England was not so much like finding a diamond in the rough as it was finding a warm responsive body amidst the cold dead forms on slabs in the Paris morgue that Dickens had so enjoyed taking me to. ~ Dan Simmons

Christ quickens none but the dead. Why do not the papists attain to this grace of justification? They never see themselves wholly dead, but join some life to the natural estate of man. Therefore Christ quickens them not. ~ Richard Sibbes

We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends--- those whom we obey, and those whom we love; but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, --- even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, --- even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its tress--- a mute friend, judge, and inspirer.
Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear conscience.
All this may seem to you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed very few of us have the will or capacity to look consciously under the surface of familiar emotions.
There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. ~ Joseph Conrad

But I like to think that even these people, whose hardships seem to come all at once, might get to experience the same number of joys in their lives as every else (and sometimes those feelings of joy pop up smack in the middle of hardship). And on the flip side, people whose lives seem perfect might also be suffering in ways we don't see, or might face hardships down the road." -Ari ~ Jennifer Richard Jacobson

The answer of life struggles in between two kinds of people-
those who live to dream
and those who dream to live
Ask them the question about death
if they can truly conceive ~ Munia Khan

Went up from my feet to my head,
With little chills after it stealing-
And my hands got as numb as the dead.
A moment, and then it was over:
The diamond blazed up in my eyes,
And I saw in the face of my lover
A questioning, strange surprise.
Maybe 'twas the scent of the flowers,
That heavy with fragrance bloomed near,
But I didn't feel natural for hours;
It was odd now, wasn't it, dear?
Write soon to your fortunate Clara
Who has carried the prize away,
And say you'll come on when I marry;
I think it will happen in May. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Zombies are a fairly new addition to the cannon of monsterdom. Really, the modern zombie goes back just to the 'Night of the Living Dead.' There's a ton of material out there, but it seems like there's not a lot of diversity out there. ~ Steve Hockensmith

Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast and endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in that maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life. If the dead man could have forgiven his enemy for whatever wrong was done to him all would have been otherwise. Did the son set out to avenge his father? Did the dead man sacrifice his son? Our plans are predicated upon a future unknown to us. The world takes its form hourly by a weighing of things at hand, and while we may seek to puzzle out that form we have no way to do so. We have only God's law, and the wisdom to follow it if we will. ~ Cormac McCarthy

We have been taking into our mouths the bodies of dead birds. ~ Virginia Woolf

The judgment: You are now before Yama, King of the Dead. In vain will you try to ... deny or conceal the evil deeds you have done ... the mirror in which Yama seems to read your past is your own memory, and also his judgment is your own. It is you yourself who pronounce your own judgment, ... ~ Gautama Buddha

Mother, he is a gentleman.
He is a builder with bricks of moonlight.
He knows the secret places of the earth.
He washes the sleep from the eyes of the souls.
He lets them look on beauty.
He lets them tell him they hate him.
In the mornings, I gather berries and apples.
I scrub his back with rind.
I weave spider-spit, eyelash.
He talks in his sleep: pudding, fire, discus,
the things he misses.
He breathes, Your body is my orchard.
I am undulating grass.
I am a field of wheat he parts with his fingers.
Poppies bloom in my veins.
When he kisses me, he tastes pomegranate.
The night crawls nearer.
The moans of the dead roll and swell.
Mother, we are well. ~ Tara Mae Mulroy

To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~ Clara Luz Zuniga Ortega

On December 9, 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian named Juan Diego. A carpet of roses blossoming in the dead of winter and a Madonna with a coffee-colored face appearing on Juan Diego's robe were enough further evidence to convince the local bishop to erect a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. There are those who say Guadalupe is Tonantzin, an Aztec goddess who existed years before Juan Diego came along. The Spanish missionaries, knowing that she had quite a local following, ~ Jodi Picoult

At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Then Gothmog hewed him with his black axe, and a white flame sprang up from the helm of Fingon as it was cloven. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces; and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

As I go into a cemetery I like to think of the time when the dead shall rise from their graves ... Thank God, our friends are not buried; they are only sown! ~ Dwight L. Moody

But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time; honey I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time. ~ Taylor Swift

The fixed is the world without fire- dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread. ~ Annie Dillard

Nevertheless, here it is: my Hideous Admission. I'll fess up and come clean. I'm out of the closet. I'm dead. Now don't hold it against me. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Look at me, woman," Lor growled.
I turned my head and met his gaze coolly.
"If he tells you anything about us, we'll kill you. Do you understand that? One word, you die. So if you're walking around feeling cocky and protected because Barrons likes to fuck you, think again. The more he likes to do you, the more likely it is that one of us will kill you."
I looked up at Ryodan.
The owner of Chester's nodded.
"Nobody killed Fiona."
"She was a doormat."
I pushed the arm away from my neck. "Get out of my way."
"I would suggest you cure him of his little problem if you want to survive," Lor said.
"Oh, I'll survive."
"The farther away from him you get, the safer you are."
"Do you want me to find the Book or not?"
Ryodan answered. "We don't give a fuck if the Book is out there. Or that the walls are down. Times change, we go on."
"Then why are you helping with the ritual? V'lane said Barrons asked you and Lor to handle the other stones."
"For Barrons. But if he breathes one word about himself, you're dead."
"I thought he was the boss of you guys."
"He is. He made the rules we live by. We'll still take you from him."
Take you from him. Sometimes I was so dense. "And he knows that."
"We've had to do it before," Lor said. "Kasteo hasn't said a word to us since. I say get over it already. It's been a thousand fucking years. What's a woman worth?"
I inhaled slow and deep as the full ramification ~ Karen Marie Moning

One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus - which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right - cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe - from circa 1100 onward - Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead ... ~ Joseph Campbell

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. ~ Samuel Beckett

'Evil Dead' was such a big movie in my life. It's one of the few that I really remember when I watched it for the first time. I mean, I don't remember when I first saw 'The Empire Strikes Back,' and it's one of my favourite movies. ~ Fede Alvarez

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth. ~ Khalil Gibran

Poet' had always sounded like a profession to me, or a talent. But the dead American [Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry] made it sound like a faith. ~ Ariel Gore

The folk of Riverton have all been dead so long. While age has withered me, they remain eternally youthful, eternally beautiful. There now. I am becoming maudlin and romantic. For they are neither young nor beautiful. They are dead. Buried. Nothing. Mere figments that flit within the memories of those they once knew. But of course, those who live in memories are never really dead. The first time ~ Kate Morton

Look at my papa here; he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him. ~ Willa Cather

On his way back through the plane Richard had seen women crying-- three women, four women. And he realized that there always were these women on planes, crying, with makeup in meltdown, folded over in the window seat or candidly hideous in the aisle, clutching Kleenex. Before, if he assumed anything, he assumed they were crying about boyfriends or husbands (partings or sunderings), or crying (who cared?) from toothache or curse pains or fear of flying. But now he was forty, and he knew.

Women on planes were crying because someone they love or loved is dead or dying. Every plane has them. ~ Martin Amis

So these liberals say historical research can't possibly discover the Jesus of faith, because the Jesus of faith is not rooted in history. He's merely a symbol. But listen: Jesus is not a symbol of anything unless he's rooted in history. The Nicene Creed doesn't say, "We wish these things were true." It says, "Jesus Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and the third day he rose again from the dead,' and it goes on from there. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

The world seems to want us to be sad and angry because bad things frequently happen. But I say we should feel the opposite. We should be happy and cheerful because good things happen. We should be delighted to see the sun rise and stars glow and rainbows color stormy skies. We should savor every simple breath and eat each meal with gratitude. We should slumber in sweet dreams and relish moments of laughter and love. We should take more notice of the joys and kindnesses that do exist, still dictating the actions of millions of good people all over the world. Life is filled with pleasant moments, not just grief. We should be happy because this is true. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I kept pretending to sleep. This was hard, the trailing touch at my underwear felt good.
Hi fingers went into my hair at the back of my head. "Babe wake up."
Hmm.
I couldn't ignore him much longer, he would think I was dead. ~ Kristen Ashley

I read her file." Voice strong and steady again, Peabody shifted back. "I know who she was, what she was. Now I know she left you with an animal. It's good she's dead."
Stunned, Eve turned her head, stared. "That's not very Free-Ager."
"Fuck that." Peabody's eyes flashed like supernovas. "Fuck tolerance and understanding. Yeah, you'd have put her in a cage for the rest of her pathetic, evil life. But maybe sometime during her rot, she'd have put it together. Maybe she'd have remembered you. She'd have used that on you; she'd have tried. Before you scared the piss out of her, if you could get to her before Roarke. If he could get there before me. And it's good she was such a selfish, pitiful excuse for a human being so she didn't remember you, didn't think about you all those years. She might've recognized you, especially after Roarke. She might've seen you on screen, and recognized you, caused you more grief and trouble. Dead's better. ~ J.D. Robb

Coal, oil and gas are called fossil fuels, because they are mostly made of the fossil remains of beings from long ago. The chemical energy within them is a kind of stored sunlight originally accumulated by ancient plants. Our civilization runs by burning the remains of humble creatures who inhabited the Earth hundreds of millions of years before the first humans came on the scene. Like some ghastly cannibal cult, we subsist on the dead bodies of our ancestors and distant relatives. ~ Carl Sagan

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. ~ Kahlil Gibran

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