Near Death Experience Quotes

We hold in our hands a key to peace on earth, yet it has been overlooked. It is the near-death experience. It must be examined closely by every living human being. The near-death experience offers one common experience, and only one. It is time for the world to embrace this reality and come together in love. ~ April Michelle Lewis

The transition from subject to observer was instantaneous, sensations, sights, and sounds changing from instruments of torment to a fascinating display of electronic signals. The spectra included thousands of frequencies, visual, audio and psi bands alike, each customized for a specific effect, a pseudo symphony for an audience of one. ~ Marcha A. Fox

The Soul is a fact, but it is not physical ... Survivors of near-death experiences attest that some part of them apparently detaches from their physical bodies following the death of the body, but while that is proof of the soul for them, it does not prove it to us. The Soul is like divine music that only God can hear; it is the force of endless resurrection; the soul is like a fire that never goes out. ~ Caroline Myss

A real good leader is faithful
to a special gift of a near-death experience
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
October 8, 2016
Babaji ~ Petra Hermans

A VERY ACCURATE ONE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE HAVING A NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE, WHICH INESCAPABLY MEANS THAT I MUST UNDERGO A NEAR-VIMES EXPERIENCE. DON'T MIND ME. CARRY ON WITH WHATEVER YOU WERE DOING. I HAVE A BOOK. ~ Terry Pratchett

The dissemination of pseudoscience, including such things as the fascination with near-death experiences and the growing belief by Americans
34 percent of them
in reincarnation are dangerous. They help to break down the standards of reason. ~ Wendy Kaminer

I had this crazy, a bit of a near-death experience in Estonia. I had these visions of the future but I was in this state where I felt the past, the present, and the future were all happening at the same time. ~ Taraka Larson

I wrote 'Mistress of Spices' at an unusual time when I had a near-death experience after the birth of my second son. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

I sucked a huge breath of air into my collapsed lungs. Once I could breathe again, I examined Ren's back. His white shirt was dirty and torn, and his skin was scratched and bleeding in several places. I took a wet shirt from the bag to clean his scratches, while removing little pieces of gravel embedded in his skin.
When I was finished, I grabbed Ren around the waist in a fierce hug. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I whispered against his chest quietly but firmly, "Thank you. But don't ever ... ever ... ever do that again!"
He laughed. "If I get results like this, I surely will do it again."
"You will not!"
Ren reluctantly let me go, and I began mumbling, complaining about tigers, men, and bugs. He seemed very pleased with himself for surviving a near-death experience. I could practically hear him chanting to himself: I overcame. I conquered. I'm a man, etc, etc. I smirked. men! No matter what century they're from, they're all the same. ~ Colleen Houck

On July 13, 1994, Lint had a near-death experience, followed immediately by death. ~ Steve Aylett

He seemed very pleased with himself for surviving a near-death experience. I could practically hear him chanting to himself: I overcame. I conquered. I'm a man etc etc. ~ Colleen Houck

I had gone through a near-death experience, and that gives you an insight into how fleeting life is, and what's important. ~ Frank Serpico

When you've had a near-death experience, your life is never the same. A divine fire is supernaturally transferred into your soul, to tell everyone about your encounter. This in itself, is a miracle. As such, I am on a mission to rid hell of its future recruits. ~ Josephine Akhagbeme

Every day is a near-death experience. ~ Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part by far.) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I was surrounded by ripples and cascades of Light, rising and falling all around me, like immense waves in the middle of a huge ocean. I was a tiny girl-child, newborn. ~ Cristael Ann Bengtson

G. K. Chesterton said that his goal in life was to take nothing for granted - not a sunrise, not a smile, not a flower, nothing. That is a truly wonderful approach to life. Don't take anything for granted. Truly appreciate every minute that you have to live. My near-death experience has helped me be better at that. If I hadn't almost died, I wouldn't have figured out how to live. ~ Mark Batterson

You call it a near death experience, I call it a near life experience! ~ L.J. Vanier

What seems most important is that Dostoevsky's near-death experience changed a typically vain and trendy young writer-a very talented writer, true, but still one whose basic concerns were for his own literary glory-into a person who believed deeply in moral/spiritual values ... more, into someone who believed that a life lived without moral/spiritual values was not just incomplete but depraved. ~ David Foster Wallace

Reading private correspondence is in poor taste, Lord Ackerly."
"Unless it is terribly interesting," Eleanor says, "which Jessamin's letters are not. Mine, however, are lurid tales of my near-death experience and subsequent sequestering against my will in the home of the mysterious and brooding Lord Ackerly. I fear I may have given you a tragic past and a deadly secret or two."
"Are we staying in a decaying Gothic abbey?" I ask.
"Naturally. When I'm finished, there won't be a person in all the city who isn't writhing with jealousy over the heart-pounding drama of my life." She pauses, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her chin. "I don't suppose you have a cousin? I could very much use a romantic foil."
Finn shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Alas. As long as I'm not the friend who meets a tragic end that brings you two together forever through shared grief." Her line meets dead silence, and a sly grin splits her face. "Oh wait, I nearly was. ~ Kiersten White

The coma carried me into a world where time and space seemed to vanish; it was a dreamlike existence in which people, places, and situations shifted as quickly as thoughts. I had a profound sense of being at a crossroads, a turning point, somewhere between death and life ... ~ Hal Zina Bennett

Jenny sensed the energy of the cosmos. It was like a harmonious orchestra vibrating the universe into existence.' Broken Mirror by Oliver Rixon ~ Oliver Rixon

I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience. ~ Huston Smith

Dr. Kevorkian has just unstrapped me from the gurney after yet another controlled near-death experience. I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolf Hitler.
I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course, were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million members of the Soviet Union, and so on.
I paid my dues along with everybody else," he said.
It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German: "Entschuldigen Sie."
Roughly translated into English, this comes out, "I Beg Your Pardon," or "Excuse Me. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Let's get going. I don't like being alone out here. The sooner we can blend in with the Imperial population the safer we'll be. It's not hard to cross here," Mari added as they waded through the stream.
"We are fortunate," Alain told her. "It is more difficult downstream."
She felt a shadow cross her mind. "Where that bridge was? Where you almost died?"
"Yes."
"I'm really proud of you for that, but don't do it again. I'm being selfish. I need you." Mari waved one finger at Alain. "Don't be a hero?"
He regarded her impassively. "Even if you need a hero? ~ Jack Campbell

The recorder consisted of a biochip smaller than the head of a pin implanted into the hippocampus and nanosensors embedded throughout the body. Normally, the system lay dormant. But as soon as it detected severe deviations from the norm in various brain activity parameters - indicative of the stress caused by imminent death or great danger - the black-box would automatically contact the police and record the short-term memory in the hippocampus via molecular scanning. In the event of death, about one to two minutes of memories preceding the cessation of brain activity could be decrypted from the black box. ~ Bao Shu

I'm tolerant of believers, but I'm agnostic. I'm curious to see how scientists will integrate the near-death experience into their research and if it will be explained. ~ Cecile De France

Love. Jack almost choked on his lukewarm coffee. He had serious doubts such an animal truly existed. It certainly hadn't in his case. Even his brother Ty had only recently found his mate, Katy Fowler, after a ten-year separation and a near death experience. If that's what it took to have a warm body in his bed, he'd pass. ~ Jacquie Biggar

Reading Poe was like a near-death experience, the kind that makes you feel fragile and free in its wake. I felt almost as though I'd scared myself alive. ~ Koren Zailckas

DEAR GOD, if I survive this near-death experience, I will:
-Well, I already go to church every Sunday
- I do a fair share of community service
-I help organize fundraisers
God, you owe me big time ~ Hasti Williams

I believe that the greatest truths of the universe don't lie outside, in the study of the stars and the planets. They lie deep within us, in the magnificence of our heart, mind, and soul. Until we understand what is within, we can't understand what is without. ~ Anita Moorjani

We've heard that you don't need a near-death experience to see Guardians. Just be more wide awake when you dream. ~ Stefanie Samek

He felt entombed and stifled and desperately craved oxygen. He vainly raised the question: Why have you forsaken me?

'Call my mother,' he yelled. He had meant to say: I'm dying. Please call a priest.

The shadowy Presence, who had been in a panic, rushed over to him and, disregarding the fact that it was live, pushed the cable aside.

'You're alive,' the Presence said in breathless tones. 'Mamma's here to help.'

The elevator continued to descend, creating a vacuum. Barnes gasped for breath.

'Breathe in, breathe out,' the Presence urged. She tapped his pulse rapidly with two fingers. 'Come on, you can do it. One, two, three. Breathe in. Mamma's here to help.' ... In his delirium he thought that indeed his mother was here to help. However, in all of Barnes's twenty-nine years of so-called living, his mother had never come so comfortingly close as this. ~ Joseph G. Peterson

When I experience something, I believe it. I almost choked to death when I was a four year old and had a near death experience. I was very upset that I didn't die because it was a lot more interesting out of your body than in it. ~ Bernie Siegel

I really should talk to him. He's had a near-death experience!"
"We all have. It's called living."
(Hogfather) ~ Terry Pratchett

Some people experience a life-changing sensation that transforms how they see the world after a near-death experience, but the way I see it, we're all dying – nay, we're all dead – and it is up to us to be our own self-necromancers to find some form of life and spirit to reanimate the corpse of a life spent wanting. ~ A.J. Darkholme

I've thought a lot about suicide and near death experiences. I'm not saying I'm going to kill myself or anything. However, I've had a lot of passive thoughts about "what's the point?". I see life for what it is. We live, we procreate, we die. So the next gen can do it again. What's my purpose or point? Why bother? What do I have to live for? The near death experiences come in with me being curious about after life. If I knew I'd be okay would I just go there, would that change my mind about my purpose? ~ Ben Caesar

I have spent much of my life around death. I have sat with people as they died. I have listened to others relate near-death experiences. I have studied theology and am aware of what scriptures and religions say about life and death. And I have come to the conclusion that death is not to be feared. Moreover, when it is time for me to move out of this tenement in which I am housed, I intend to look forward to it joyfully. ~ Steve Goodier

Time's relativity
is considered and abandoned,
for the more revelatory
experiences of starlight
in strands, and pearly
floors that span as far as
absolute compassion... ~ Kristen Henderson

Our eternal spiritual self is more real than anything we perceive in this physical realm, and has a divine connection to the infinite love of the Creator. ~ Eben Alexander

Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn't a country; it's a near-death experience. ~ Bill Bryson

Booze really was medicinal, after a near-death experience. Holding a drink in both hands and letting it corrode the topmost layer of his mouth and throat, Laurence felt a spiritual relationship with Bushmills. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

I'm a really cautious person, so I don't let myself get into near-death experiences. I'm not into the idea of skydiving or anything. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead

That is an incredible period I think when you have a near-death experience. You are really understanding that there is a greater self than the physical body, and the cosmic anatomy as I call it is suspended and physical, is almost attached to it but not quite, and you're living in that in-between sphere of apparent reality around you and then the real reality of the infiniteness of it all. ~ Maya Tiwari

In that nanosecond of enlightenment I knew that the human spirit survives the death of the physical body and I understood that my wandering soul needed to get back into its earthly habitat. ~ Janet Bettag

If a sailor escapes with his life in a storm on the open sea, he will be grateful but soon forget his deliverance, Newton writes (no doubt looking back to the storm that nearly took his life). But even more permanently thankful will be the sailor who escapes storm after storm, swell after swell, near-death experience after near-death experience, and then after such an odyssey finally finds his way to safe harbor. ~ Tony Reinke

They had come all at once, scientists being pack animals. Their leader was a nice man named Carlos, who had started dating Cecil, the presenter of the local radio station, after a near-death experience a few years before involving a brutal attack from a tiny civilization living under lane 5 of the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. It was an ordinary enough way to begin a relationship, as these things go. ~ Joseph Fink

I believe that everybody, whether you believe in the afterlife or the chance of a near-death experience and you come back and you see someone [on the other side] - whether that has happened or not, I don't know, but certainly everyone has thought about it at some point or another in time. It's a fantasy that if there is anything out there like that, it would be just terrific, but that remains to be seen. ~ Clint Eastwood

I detach myself from preconceived outcomes and trust that all is well. Being myself allows the wholeness of my unique magnificience to draw me in those directions most beneficial to me and to all others. This is really the only thing I have to do. And within that framework, everything that is truly mine comes into my life effortlessly, in the most magical and unexpected ways imaginable, demonstrating every day the power and love of who I truly am. ~ Anita Moorjani

The part of my brain that was responsible for creating the world I lived and moved in and for taking the raw data that came in through my senses and fashioning it into a meaningful universe: that part of my brain was down, and out. And yet despite all of this, I had been alive, and aware, truly aware, in a universe characterized above all by love, consciousness, and reality. There was, for me, simply no arguing this fact. I knew it so completely that I ached. ~ Eben Alexander

After you die, you wear what you are. ~ Teresa Of Avila

Nanak's encounter of God and God's court was in fact a profound hallucinatory Near-Death Experience caused by drowning that strengthened his pre-conceived notion of a rational, compassionate and unorthodox society. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Treasures are hidden and hard to find but if we could find a real treasure, it will shine our lives. In the similar way ultimate reality is hidden and hard to find but if we could find it, it will shine our lives. ~ Muditha Champika

It's called a near-death experience. You should try it sometime," I said sweetly. "Maybe without the 'near'. ~ Stacey Kade

To experience thinking outside the brain is to enter a world of instantaneous connections that make ordinary thinking (i.e those aspects limited by the physical brain and the speed of light_ seem like some hopelessly sleepy and plodding event. Our truest, deepest self is completely free. It is not crippled or compromised by past actions or concerned with identity or status. It comprehends that it has no need to fear the earthly world, and therefore, it has no need to build itself up through fame or wealth or conquest. ~ Eben Alexander

I tried to concentrate on the angel's voice instead.
"Bella, please! Bella, listen to me, please, please, please, Bella, please!" he begged.
Yes, I wanted to say. Anything. But I couldn't find my lips.
"Carlisle!" the angel called, agony in his perfect voice. "Bella, Bella, no, oh please, no, no!" And the angel was sobbing tearless, broken sobs.
The angel shouldn't weep, it was wrong. I tried to find him, to tell him everything was fine, but the water was so deep, it was pressing on me, and I couldn't breathe. ~ Stephenie Meyer

You look tired."
"Yeah," I agreed, and shrugged. "Near-death experiences do that to me ... ~ Stephenie Meyer

Jenny retained a flimsy essence of the truth. It was a quiet knowing she'd always hold in her heart...'Broken Mirror by Oliver Rixon ~ Oliver Rixon

Morpheus places his hand on Jeb's busy fingers, eyes opened to slits. "Ah, my pretty pseudo elf." He takes labored breath. "is it time at last to express our unrequited feelings? ~ A.G. Howard

Very often, (in near-death experiences) the person encounters a divine or angelic being. This may be described as Christ, an angel, even God. ~ Raymond Moody

The closest I ever came to a near death experience was living in LA. ~ Deirdra Baldwin

One of the near-death experience truths is that each person integrates their near-death experience into their own pre-existing belief system. ~ Jodi Long

Don't yell at me when I just survived a near-death experience. (Abbie) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

His eyesight was possessed by the colours of trauma, cracking and bubbling like an old Super Eight film to remind him of his near-death drowning some two months ago in that very moment when he needed to act. ~ Luke Taylor

Through Heaven's Gate and Back speaks to all of us that have been abused as children. Lee Thornton's descriptions of the aftereffects of repeated trauma and a profound Near-Death Experience (NDE) are not only true but explained in a way that the reader can take in. It is rare to find a book so well written that it has both sexual abuse and an NDE under one cover. We definitely will be recommending this book to our patients. ~ Charles L. Whitfield

I was watching Maury Povich the other day. He had these people on who say that they've had near death experiences. Do you ever notice they always say the same thing? 'I remember seeing this really bright, white light.' It's like, of course, you pinhead, it's the paramedic looking in your pupils with a penlight. ~ Carol Leifer

Do you ever feel that same need? Your life is so very different from my own. The grandness of the world, the real world, the whole world, is a known thing for you. And you have no need of dispatches because you have seen so much of the American galaxy and its inhabitants - their homes, their hobbies - up close. I don't know what it means to grow up with a black president, social networks, omnipresent media, and black women everywhere in their natural hair. What I know is that when they loosed the killer of Michael Brown, you said, "I've got to go." And that cut me because, for all our differing worlds, at your age my feeling was exactly the same. And I recall that even then I had not yet begun to imagine the perils that tangle us. You still believe the injustice was Michael Brown. You have not yet grappled with your own myths and narratives and discovered the plunder everywhere around us.

Before I could discover, before I could escape, I had to survive, and this could only mean a clash with the streets, by which I mean not just physical blocks, nor simply the people packed into them, but the array of lethal puzzles and strange perils that seem to rise up from the asphalt itself. The streets transform every ordinary day into a series of trick questions, and every incorrect answer risks a beat-down, a shooting, or a pregnancy. No one survives unscathed. And yet the heat that springs from the constant danger, from a lifestyle of near-death experience, is thrilling. T ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

You will experience the triple Goddess - Maiden, Mother, and Crone. These phases are symbolic to, not just your own life, but life as a whole. Birth, life, and death. As women, it is important to understand you are the cycle. ~ Emma Mildon

For three years, all through junior high, my social death was grossly overdetermined. I had a large vocabulary, a giddily squeaking voice, horn-rimmed glasses, poor arm strength, too-obvious approval from my teachers, irresistible urges to shout unfunny puns, a near-eidetic acquaintance with J.R.R. Tolkien, a big chemistry lab in my basement, a penchant for intimately insulting any unfamiliar girl unwise enough to speak to me, and so on. ~ Jonathan Franzen

This association of the idea of the orgasm and the idea of dying is a universal one. On the basis of these typical clinical examples, we arrive at the following conclusion: the striving after non-existence, nirvana, death, is identical with the striving after orgastic release, i.e., the most essential experience of the living organism. Thus, an idea of death stemming from the actual demise of the organism does not and cannot exist, because an idea can reflect only what has already been experienced. No one, however, has ever experienced his or her own death. ~ Wilhelm Reich

As an adult, I know about life and death. I know that good people can die too soon and bad ones can live too long. I know that life's not fair, and you take the bitter with the sweet and balance it all as best you can. ~ Elsie Hillman-Gordon

We are all born and someday we'll all die. Most likely to some degree alone.What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?

If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn't be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn't be a metaphor, it would be a reality.

And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.

This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.

I can't cool boiling waters in Russia. I can't be Picasso. I can't be Jesus. I can't save the planet single-handedly.

I can wash dishes. ~ Rachel Corrie

In this sense, we can render the false meaning of catharsis which occurs in pornography with a different meaning than the catharsis we associate with Aristotle's definition of tragedy. For in the tragedy, we weep, grieve and feel pity. We are brought to feeling, we experience both meaning and sensation at the same time, tremble in our bodies and our souls. Thus we weep over the death of Iphigenia, of Tristan and Iseult, of Madame Bovary. In experiencing these feelings, we have tapped a part of ourselves which had perhaps been quiet for some time. Which indeed, in this stillness, we were not certain was even there. Or had even forgotten. And thus, when we weep at this tragic playing out before our eyes of a drama which touches our hearts, a part of ourselves we had left in shadow comes back to us and is named and is lived. But pornographic catharsis moves from altogether different needs. For, we know, one does not weep over the death of Justine. One does not feel at all. Rather, one experiences only sensation and mastery. If there is a vulnerable part of oneself that would weep, this vulnerability is projected onto the body of a woman who is punished, and is destroyed there. And so we cease, in this projection, to recognize this vulnerability as a part of ourselves. Rather than reclaim a feeling, or own a part of ourselves once more, we disown ourselves. What pornography calls "catharsis" leads to denial and not to knowledge. ~ Susan Griffin

But it's believed the soul can stay on earth for three to forty days after death. It eventually recieves temporary judgment that sends it on from this world to heaven or hell-although no one will truly experience either until the actual Judgment Day, when the soul and body are reunited to live out eternity as one. ~ Richelle Mead

Arguing with a dead man in a lavatory is a claustrophobic experience. ~ Ian McEwan

In belief in what? In love with what? In hope for what? - There's no doubt that these weak people - at some time or another they also want to be the strong people, some day their "kingdom" is to arrive - they call it simply "the kingdom of God" as I mentioned. People are indeed so humble about everything! Only to experience that, one has to live a long time, beyond death - in fact, people must have an eternal life, so they can also win eternal recompense in the "kingdom of God" for that earthly life "in faith, in love, in hope." Recompense for what? Recompense through what? In my view, Dante was grossly in error when, with an ingenuity inspiring terror, he set that inscription over the gateway into his hell:"Eternal love also created me." Over the gateway into the Christian paradise and its "eternal blessedness" it would, in any event, be more fitting to let the inscription stand "Eternal hate also created me" - provided it's all right to set a truth over the gateway to a lie! For what is the bliss of that paradise? Perhaps we might have guessed that already, but it is better for it to be expressly described for us by an authority we cannot underestimate in such matters, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint: "In the kingdom of heaven" he says as gently as a lamb, "the blessed will see the punishment of the damned, so that they will derive all the more pleasure from their heavenly bliss. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When I look back all is flux, without beginning and flowing towards no end, or none that I shall experience, except as a final full stop. The items of flotsam that I choose to salvage from the general wreckage - and what is a life but a gradual shipwreck? - may take on an aspect of inevitability when I put them on display in their glass showcases, but they are random; representative, perhaps, perhaps compellingly so, but random nonetheless. ~ John Banville

I must court her now,' said the Prince. 'Leave us alone for a minute.' He rode the white expertly down the hill.
Buttercup had never seen such a giant beast. Or such a rider.
'I am your Prince and you will marry me,' Humperdinck said.
Buttercup whispered, 'I am your servant and I refuse.'
'I am your Prince and you cannot refuse.'
'I am your loyal servant and I just did.'
'Refusal means death.'
'Kill me then.'
'I am your Prince and I'm not that bad - how could you rather be dead than married to me?'
'Because,' Buttercup said, 'marriage involves love, and that is not a pastime at which I excel. I tried once, and it went badly, and I am sworn never to love another.'
'Love?' said Prince Humperdinck. 'Who mentioned love? Not me, I can tell you. Look: there must always be a male heir to the throne of Florin. That's me. Once my father dies, there won't be an heir, just a king. That's me again. When that happens, I'll marry and have children until there is a son. So you can either marry me and be the richest and most powerful woman in a thousand miles and give turkeys away at Christmas and provide me a son, or you can die in terrible pain in the very near future. Make up your own mind.'
'I'll never love you.'
'I wouldn't want it if I had it.'
'Then by all means let us marry. ~ William Goldman

Love and a sense of calmness are the only things you need to bring to the experience of death. ~ Sandra Ingerman

The old curator of ceramics lay near the door, looking indignant, as if death was a silly modern fad that he rather disapproved of. ~ Philip Reeve

Alas, our fundamental experience is duality: mind and body, freedom and necessity, evil and good, and certainly world and God. It is the same with our protest against pain and death. In the poetry I select I am not seeking an escape from dread but rather proof that dread and reverence can exist within us simultaneously. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.
In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive? ~ Margaret Atwood

Why should I be frightened of dying? I did not know what death truly was; no one did. Who had made dying a bad word? Yes, it was universally considered awful - unwanted, painful, feared - because when it happened it stopped us from moving and being, and we interpreted that as if something had ended. But what if it were actually a beautiful experience? What if, with death, something actually began instead? ~ Charles Novacek

Truth was something intangible, unseen, which sometimes we stumbled upon and did not recognize, but was found, and held, and understood only by old people near their death, or sometimes by the very pure, the very young. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

What emotions would we experience if we weren't working ourselves to death? What wishes drive us? What fantasies hitch themselves to our continual busyness? Only when we step away from our frenzy can we know. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

Grief is messy. It's traumatic. Devastating. Confusing. Exhausting. Grief is a natural process of our human experience. May you find comfort in these unexpected places along your journey. ~ Dana Arcuri

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. ~ Woody Allen

Saint Helena," Dennis said, "also known as the empress Helena was the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the great. Birthdate not known but thought to be either 246 or 250AD. Died 330AD. Famous for finding the relics from Christ's crucifixion. She found the nails and rope used to fix him to his cross. She also found the cross on which he was crucified. She found a total of three crosses and had a woman from Jerusalem, who was near death, touch each one. When the woman touched the third cross she was cured. ~ Julian Noyce

I figured I had kept her from being too depressed after fucking
it's hard for a girl with any force in her and any brains to accept the whole thing of fucking, of being fucked without trying to turn it on its end, so that she does some fucking, or some fucking up; I mean, the mere power of arousing the man so he wants to fuck isn't enough; she wants him to be willing to die in order to fuck. There's a kind of strain or intensity women are bred for, as beasts, for childbearing when childbearing might kill them, and child rearing when the child might die at any moment: it's in women to live under that danger, with that risk, that close to tragedy, with that constant taut or casual courage. They need death and nobility near. To be fucked when there's no drama inherent in it, when you're not going to rise to a level of nobility and courage forever denied the male, is to be cut off from what is inherently female, bestially speaking. ~ Harold Brodkey

Could there, I wanted to know, be any dignity in such a death? Can anything be salvaged of what once was, to bring a sense of himself to aman near his final hour, when he has been through so much? ~ Sherwin B. Nuland

Once very near the end I said, 'If you can
if it is allowed
come to me when I too am on my death bed.' 'Allowed!' she said. 'Heaven would have a job to hold me; and as for Hell, I'd break it into bits. ~ C.S. Lewis

Always too eager for the future, we
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every day
Till then we say,

Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,
Sparkling armada of promises draw near.
How slow they are! And how much time they waste,
Refusing to make haste!

Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks
Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks
Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,
Each rope distinct,

Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits
Arching our way, it never anchors; it's
No sooner present than it turns to past.
Right to the last

We think each one will heave to and unload
All good into our lives, all we are owed
For waiting so devoutly and so long.
But we are wrong:

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

- Next, Please ~ Philip Larkin

Understanding how fragile the human experience is, and grasping your inevitable demise, if you allow it, will guide your life decisions and inspire you to a greater existence. ~ Alpha Four

Life is a transition. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I was on a starvation diet to look like I was near death in a film ... but I went at it with a plan, and I had a guide; a nutritionist kind of helped me with it. ~ Anne Hathaway

We don't have to experience it in order to recognise it. There's a moment, an event, a word, a gesture, a telephone call that changes everything. And when it occurs, when it erupts, when it is spoken, it breaks the rudder we thought was guiding our lives, confronting us with reality, demolishing all our innocent plans for the future. Everything we thought was solid collapsed, all life's worries seem absurd, because the only absolute is the chaos that forces us to surrender humbly to death's supremacy. ~ Dolores Redondo

And then the death will come. The great parting, but the least painful of all the goodbyes we ever knew. For in death, only one shall grieve. And so far we have always, at every parting, grieved together. ~ Ivo Andric

All my life, I have taken satisfaction in finishing things in order that I may experience a sense of achievement, regardless of whether the thing was really worth achieving. ... Death, I suspect, will likely be unsatisfying because I will no longer be present to feel the achievement thereof. ~ Kathleen Rooney

Everyone focuses on the earthly state, but how cool might death be? I believe in spiritual rebirth, and I can't wait to experience that. ~ Barry Zito

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find until after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same. ~ C.S. Lewis