The Grim Quotes

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Some golfers, we are told, enjoy the landscape; but properly, the landscape shrivels and compresses into the grim, surrealistically vivid patch of grass directly under the golfer's eyes as he morosely walks toward where he thinks his ball might be. ~ John Updike

Aramis liked the t-shirt he was given because it had the image of the Grim Reaper on it. He liked the irony, since the Grim Reaper took lives, while he was a saver of lives. ~ Jason Medina

You're not a woman," he said finally. "You're the Grim Reaper with red hair! ~ Jeaniene Frost

It looks like a Grim if you do this," Seamus Finnigan said, with his eyes almost shut, "but it looks more like a donkey from here," he said, leaning to the left. ~ J.K. Rowling

The Grim Reaper isn't grim at all; he's a life-saver. He isn't grim because he isn't anything ... he is nothing. And nothing is a hell of a lot better than anything. So long, boys. ~ Jack Kerouac Atop An Underwood Early Stories And Other Writings

There can be no greater antithesis than between the Greeks' rational and objective truth and the "truth of unreason," as Bertrand Russell aptly termed faith in religions, fictions about supernatural beings that soothe and comfort weaklings who are afraid to contemplate the grim world of reality. ~ Revilo P. Oliver

The magic in these Masonic rituals is very, very old. And way back in those days, it worked. As time went on, and it started being used for spectacle, to consolidate what were only secular appearances of power, it began to lose its zip. But the words, moves, and machinery have been more or less faithfully carried down over the millennia, through the grim rationalizing of the World, and so the magic is still there, though latent, needing only to touch the right sensitive head to reassert itself. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Back from the funeral, we think we felt the grim reaper swing close; we feel him stalking us. We ward off anxiety before the imminent and inescapable annihilation awaiting us by establishing control over our life and field of operations, by projecting an advance representation of what each day brings, and by measuring our enterprises to our forces. We arrange our home and our situation and our workday in such a way that we retain, behind the forms of our performances, a reserve of force for the tasks that will recur the next day. We settle into an occupation that requires only those mental tasks for which we have already contracted the mental skills. We frame our pleasures and our angers, our affections and our vexations, in the patterns and confines of feelings we can repeat indefinitely. We avoid going to places utterly unlike any other, which would leave us wholly astonished, with an astonishment that could never recur. We seek out partners others might also fall in love with, and we love our partner as others love like partners, with a love that we could recycle for another partner should we lose this one. For we sense that were we to expend all our forces on an adventure, discharge all our mental powers on a problem, empty out all the love in our heart on a woman or a man unlike any other, we would be dying in that adventure, that problem, that love. ~ Alphonso Lingis

When the headlines get black and foreboding, the sale of alcohol and barbiturates rises in the country, as millions try to escape from the grim realities of [such] dangers. ~ Billy Graham

The Chinese enjoyed the grim spectacle of death, Jim had decided, as a way of reminding themselves of how precariously they were alive. They liked to be cruel for the same reason, to remind themselves of the vanity of thinking that the world was anything else. ~ J.G. Ballard

No man knows where the Castle of King Death is. All men and women, boys and girls, and even little wee children should so live that when they have to enter the Castle and see the grim King, they may not fear to behold his face. ~ Bram Stoker

The natural alone is permanent. Fantastic idols may be worshipped for a while; but at length they are overturned by the continual and silent progress of Truth, as the grim statues of Copan have been pushed from their pedestals by the growth of forest-trees, whose seeds were sown by the wind in the ruined walls. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The grim portrait of Beethoven hanging over the piano ... was removed from its nail, and an equally grim portrait of Hitler was hung on the same nail ... Mama ... insisted that Beethoven be placed, if not over the sofa, at least over the sideboard. This resulted in the grimmest of confrontations: Hitler and the genius hung opposite each other, stared at each other, saw through each other, yet found no joy in what they saw. ~ Gunter Grass

The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything. ~ John C. Bogle

The cemetery watchman left the room and returned with a tray holding three small skulls and a large one. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck standing up of their own accord. None of them were real though; they were wood or celluloid imitations. They all had flaps that opened at the top; one was a jug and the other three steins.

The man behind the desk named the toast. 'To our Friend!' I thought he meant myself at first; he meant that shadowy enemy of all mankind, the Grim Reaper.

'We are called The Friends of Death,' he explained to me when the grisly containers had been emptied. 'To outline our creed and purpose briefly, it is this: That death is life, and life is death. We have mastered death, and no member of the Friends of Death need ever fear it. They 'die,' it is true, but after death they are buried in special graves in our private cemetery - graves having air vents, such as you discovered. Also, our graves are equipped with electric signals, so that after the bodies of our buried members begin to respond to the secret treatment our scientists have given them before internment, we are warned. Then we come and release them - and they live again. Moreover, they are released, freed of their thralldom; from then on death is an old familiar friend instead of an enemy. They no longer fear it. Do you not see what a wonderful boon this would be in your case, Brother Bud; you who have suffered so from that fear?' ("Graves For The Living") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I'd known friends who went through this, the grim tracking of the ovulation cycle, the way making love becomes insemination, as romantic as a turkey baster. One of my college friends, in fact, had said she preferred the turkey baster. "I don't have to pretend that way, ~ Kristan Higgins

When you think of me," she said quietly "think of a food you love very much. ~ Lemony Snicket

I did not rush in with the vim I would have displayed a year or so earlier, before Life had made me the grim, suspicious man I am to-day: ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Finally he said that in his first years of darkness his dreams had been vivid beyond all expectation and that he had come to thirst for them but that dreams and memories alike had faded one by one until there were no more. Of all that once had been no trace remained. The look of the world. The faces of loved ones. Finally even his own person was lost to him. Whatever he had been he was no more. He said that like every man who comes to the end of something there was nothing to be done but to begin again. I can't remember the world of light, he said. It has been so long. The world is a fragile world. Ultimately, what can be seen is what endures. What is true ...
In my first years of blindness, I thought it was a form of death. I was wrong. Losing one's sight is like falling in a dream. You think there's no bottom to this abyss. You fall and fall. Light recedes. Memory of light. Memory of the world. Of your own face. Of the grim-faced mask. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I frowned, gaping at the blond in disbelief. "You're the grim reaper?"
Tod glanced at me for the first time, his frown practically etched into place. "You were
expecting someone older? Taller? Maybe kind of gaunt and skeletal?"Contempt dripped from his words like acid. ~ Rachel Vincent

Akela, the grim old wolf who had never asked for mercy in his life, gave one piteous look at Mowgli as the boy stood all naked, his long black hair tossing over his shoulders in the light of the blazing branch that made the shadows jump and quiver. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Even with the Brotherhood as support, going to the colony was a suicide mission - and she was willing to bet there were a lot of people having sex under the mansion's roof right now.
Sometimes you had to have a taste of life right before you knocked on the Grim Reaper's front
door. ~ J.R. Ward

And, ah, who are you? What Horseman, I mean." Thanatos swung around. "Death." Cara swallowed. Audibly. "As in, the Grim Reaper?" He snorted. "That poser. ~ Larissa Ione

He's going to pack it with wet, sterile gauze instead," Verex explained. "It will heal slowly, from the inside out." The prince's voice was strong and sure. He was turning the grim words of the physician into something hopeful. "Really, that's the best way to avoid infection, because the wound can be cleaned out daily."
The physician gave him a sidelong look. "I'm not sure I need the commentary." But Kestrel did, and Verex knew that she did. ~ Marie Rutkoski

Patch wore black jeans and a matching T- shirt that hugged his form. He rested his hands on my shoulders, facing me. "Ready?"
Despite the grim mood, I smiled and cracked my knuckles. "Ready to wrestle my gorgeous boyfriend? Oh, I'd say I'm ready for that."
Amusement softened his eyes.
"I'll try to control where I put my hands, but in the heat of things, who knows what could happen?" I added.
Patch grinned. "Sounds promising. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Tell you what. You prove you work for the Grim Reaper, and I'll prove I'm an elf. Deal?"
"Deal." Razr grinned, that killer one that made her ovaries clench. "Come on, Dobby. Let's go. ~ Larissa Ione

I used to want to be a cop for a brief time, a detective, solving crimes and upholding the law, ever since I stated watching crime shows in junior high. But being a cop, contrary to what many believe, isn't like the films or television shows that we see every day. If you're the cop who has to have the grim duty of telling a parent that their child was killed, or who loses their friend on a dangerous case, or who has to interview victims of horrible crimes, somehow I imagine that you just want to quit forever on some days. ~ Rebecca McNutt

I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

The leaves, they run like mice, while birds peck at the ground. The wood has rotted in its bin. The grim axe has come round ~ Andre Alexis

We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters? ~ Indira Gandhi

She was sorry for all the grim-tale girls locked in lonely towers. Trapped in sugar houses. Lost in the dark woods, with a huntsman coming to cut out their hearts. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Underpinning them was the belief that the grim reality of impending death can be talked away by trying to invest in the present reality of life. ~ Irvine Welsh

Then angels were all around them, the old crew who'd formed at Sword & Cross and hundreds of other places before that.
Arriane, Roland, Cam, and Annabelle. They'd saved Luce more times than she could every say.
"This is hard." Luce folded herself into Roland's arms.
"Oh, come on. You already saved the world." He laughed. "Now go save your relationship."
"Don't listen to Dr. Phil!" Arriane squealed. "Don't ever leave us!" She was trying to laugh but it wasn't working. Rebellious tears streamed down her face. She didn't wipe them away; she just held on tight to Annabelle's hand. "Okay, fine, go!"
"We'll be thinking of you," Annabelle said. "Always."
"I'll be thinking of you too." Luce had to believe it was true. Otherwise, if she was really going to forget all this, she couldn't bear to leave them.
But the angels smiled sadly, knowing she had to forget them.
That left Cam, who was standing close to Daniel, their arms clapped around each other's shoulders. "You pulled it off, brother."
"Course I did." Daniel played at being haughty, but it came off as love. "Thanks to you."
Cam took Luce's hand. His eyes were bright green, the first color that had ever stood out to her in the grim, dreary world of Sword & Cross.
He tilted his head and swallowed, considering his words carefully.
He drew her close, and for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. Her heart pounded as his lips bypassed hers and came to a sto ~ Lauren Kate

A profound piece of surgery has to take place in the very psyche of the disinherited before the great claim of the religion of Jesus can be presented. The great stretches of barren places in the soul must be revitalized, brought to life, before they can be challenged. Tremendous skill and power must be exercised to show the disinherited the awful results of the role of negative deception into which their lives have been cast. How to do this is perhaps the greatest challenge that the religion of Jesus faces in modern life.

Mere preaching is not enough. What are words, however sacred and powerful, in the presence of the grim facts of the daily struggle to survive? Any attempt to deal with this situation on a basis of values that disregard the struggle for survival appears to be in itself a compromise with life. It is only when people live in an environment in which they are not required to exert supreme effort into just keeping alive that they seem to be able to selects ends besides those of mere physical survival. ~ Howard Thurman

In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation lies in the way the author takes control of reality by retelling it in his own way, thus creating a new world. Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life. The perfection and beauty of form rebels against the ugliness and shabbiness of the subject matter. ~ Azar Nafisi

Calm down, Braveheart." Gabriel searched through the weapons. "I'm trying to find something not quite as fatal as ... a scythe? Really?"
Gabriel held the wicked half-moon blade up and looked at Tristan. "What are you, the Grim Reaper?"
"Yes. Yes, Gabriel. I'm the Grim Reaper. You caught me. I drive around in my car full of weapons collecting souls. ~ Chelsea Fine

A society where you're not allowed to blow your own trumpet is so much more nuanced, sophisticated and interesting than the grim world of literalism that's being ushered in. ~ David Mitchell

This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "conciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I understood why I'd been chosen. Why I'd been plucked out of the grim and struggle.
I'd always been at war. ~ Rachel Caine

If the grim realities you are facing at this time seem dark and heavy and almost unbearable, remember that in the soul-wrenching darkness of Gethsemane and the incomprehensible torture and pain of Calvary, the Savior accomplished the Atonement, which resolves the most terrible burdens that can occur in this life. He did it for you, and He did it for me. He did it because He loves us and because He obeys and loves His Father. We will be rescued from death-even from the depths of the sea. ~ Quentin L. Cook

You can only pretend that you're already dead and thus free yourself up to focus on three things: 1) finding and killing the enemy, 2) communicating the situation and resulting actions to adjacent units and higher headquarters, and 3) triaging and treating your wounded. If you love your men, you naturally think about number three first, but if you do you're wrong. The grim logic of combat dictates that numbers one and two take precedence. ~ Donovan Campbell

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."
She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. She made it with infinite care, and hung it to the slightly careening mantel over the stove in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear.
Afterwards the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins. ~ Stephen Crane

At which point, at long last, there was the actual doing it, quickly followed by the grim realization of what it meant to do it, followed by the decision to quit doing it because doing it was absurd and pointless and ridiculously difficult and far more than I expected doing it would be and I was profoundly unprepared to do it. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Modern married women do not fare better in life than their single counterparts. Married women in America do not live longer than single women; married women do not accumulate as much wealth as single women (you take a 7 percent pay cut, on average, just for getting hitched); married women do not thrive in their careers to the extent single women do; married women are significantly less healthy than single women; married women are more likely to suffer from depression than single women; and married women are more likely to die a violent death than single women - usually at the hands of a husband, which raises the grim reality that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous person in the average woman's life is her own man. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

It feels like getting a back massage from the Grim Reaper: one must get comfortable with the most horrifying things in the world. ~ Gerald R. Ford

In Prison Wearily, drearily, Half the day long, Flap the great banners High over the stone; Strangely and eerily Sounds the wind's song, Bending the banner-poles. While, all alone, Watching the loophole's spark, Lie I, with life all dark, Feet tethered, hands fettered Fast to the stone, The grim walls, square lettered With prisoned men's groan. Still strain the banner-poles Through the wind's song, Westward the banner rolls Over my wrong. ~ William Morris

I'm not hungry."
"Then at least let me get you some water."
"I'm fine, Karissa," I tell her. "Good as new."
"You're delusional."
"You mispronounced handsome."
She scoffs. "Not today. You look like shit."
"Whatever, so maybe you're still handsome, even when you look like you've been fucked by the grim reaper. ~ J.M. Darhower

Samaras is making the crudest of anti-immigrant pitches, and we didn't have to wait to see the consequence. On Friday - almost wholly ignored in the wake of the grim news from Paris - a gunman entered a hostel housing primarily migrant workers in Salonika, brandished a pistol and threatened to open fire because he "was sick of paying taxes for you people." A social outcast, perhaps? A thug belonging associated with the fascists of Golden Dawn? No. Stelios Ioannides is a local functionary of Samaras's New Democracy. ~ Anonymous

Just because you get to a certain number doesn't mean you have to roll up into a ball and wait for the grim reaper. We were put on this earth to do something! If you stop using your brain, at any age, it is going to stop working. It's like if you stop using your hand, it will atrophy. I think doing nothing is a curse. ~ Iris Apfel

What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death. ~ William James

It turns out the mark of a happy life isn't staying just one step ahead of the grim reaper. It's knowing you're strong. ~ Robyn Carr

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Sometimes it seemed to me I could not look at those silent little figures; that I must go north, to the grim coal fields, to the Rocky Mountain camps, where the labor fight is at least fought by grown men. ~ Mary Harris Jones

Rourke was the Grim Reaper with a hard-on. ~ Susan Wiggs

You know, I don't at all hesitate to be a bit utopian about all this because I think hope is itself an act, a very big leap, which in a sense defies the grim facts always about us and opens up new ways of thinking about things. ~ Daniel Berrigan

Should I leave you two alone?" he asked, changing the subject.

"He's taken," I said, accepting the fact that forgiving himself was something Reyes didn't do. "Osh. By someone very special."

"And who might that be?"

This might be a little hard for him to swallow. Tact was definitely in order. Or I could just blurt it out and watch his expression go from content to disbelief to horror to a bristly, murderous kind of fury. I chose door number two. "He's destined to be with our daughter."

Reyes's expression slowly changed from content to disbelief to horror to a bristly, murderous kind of fury. "Oh, hell, no." He shot to his feet. "A Daeva? Are you fucking kidding me?"

Just like a dad.

"Yes, a Daeva. But I wouldn't dismiss him so offhandedly."

He whirled around and scowled. Not really at me. Just in general. "What do you mean?"

I pressed one corner of my mouth together in thought. "Okay, you know how I was the grim reaper all of my life, then suddenly I'm also this god from another dimension? And how you're the son of Satan all your life, then suddenly you're a god from this dimension? Who does that? Our lives are so weird. I think that maybe Osh is something else, too." I traced one of the dark lines on his face. "I think there's more than meets the eye. I see greatness in him, Reyes. I see a power beyond our imaginings. I see him giving his life for our daughter."

"Oh." He sat bac ~ Darynda Jones

When the side effects knock you down, find the strength to get up, because you are a soldier. You've paid your dues, and nobody can hurt you because your foundation is solid.
You are not broken down anymore. The Grim Reaper cannot steal your joy. You are no longer its victim. You are victorious, feeling good and living free! The 'treatment' gave you a turbocharge to find a cure. The cure is to love yourself more and to put yourself first. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The unpredictability of our unavailing lives is inane and frivolous, with the grim reaper only ever one step behind us. Your greatest challenge is to live the life you dream of, before his deathly scythe decapitates your peripheral existence ~ Michael Khatkar

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later. ~ Richard M. Nixon

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell-but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful-but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us-they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

If introspection is thought, Marvin was not introspective. He felt the contempt he lived under as raw sensation, as heat
heat in the ears, behind the eyes, in the tangled ganglia sheathed by the skull. And contempt, it seemed, was no different from fear. At Princeton he became afraid. It dawned on him that it was not enough to be bright (all Townsend Harris boys were bright): you had to be right. For the first time he was struck by the import of birthright
you slid out of the womb grasping it in your tiny fist, a certificate that guaranteed you would know how to speak and dress and scorn and brazenly intimidate everyone doomed to enter the world empty-handed. Not that Marvin was altogether empty-handed
he had his scholarship, and he had, most of all, the engine of his will and the grim burden of his hurt. He resisted humiliation by accepting it, sometimes almost appearing to invite it: it taught him what was suitable and what wasn't. ~ Cynthia Ozick

Let's just say that my father is a very powerful man."
"That's a little understated, don't you think? ... You know, seeing how he's the Grim fucking Reaper. ~ Larissa Ione

Footnote: In 1998, a woman in Saline, Michigan received a patent for a Decorative Penile Wrap ... The patent included three pages of drawings, including a penis wearing a ghost outfit, another in the robes of the Grim Reaper, and one dressed up to look like a snowman. ~ Mary Roach

Surely there is the handful of nursery marchen that start, 'Once in the middle of a forest lived an old witch' or 'The devil was out walking one day and met a child,' " Said Oatsie, who was showing that she had some education as well as grit. "To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her - is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not the devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions. ~ Gregory Maguire

I kill on order. I am everyone's assassin. I belong to no one but the grim reaper herself. ~ Katherine Ewell

I've got money!" Eve exclaimed in a frantic frenzy of hope, her eyes dancing wildly with the notion that there was some way out of this. "I mean, I don't know what use money is to the Grim Reaper, but I've got a ton of cash! It's in a hat box under my bed! I've got a bright red Lexus in the garage, I've got my engagement ring upstairs, it's real gold… there must be something we can trade off with…"
"You can't bribe me away, I'm afraid," said Mr. Azrael. "Money means nothing where I come from. ~ Rebecca McNutt

The grim possibility is that she who 'hides her brains' will, more than likely, end up with a mate who is only equal to a woman with 'hidden brains' or none at all. ~ Lorraine Hansberry

Memory, with its fugitive adjustments, is the merciful veil to the grim enactments of the first law. It hides the anguish in the human heart which is always craving for perpetuity. ~ Stacy Aumonier

The dark eyes are for the villains ... the Grim Reaper,the Joker, zombies. All dark. ~ Lucy Christopher

There's no rule book or game plan when it comes to the grim realities of our lives. ~ Simone Elkeles

A real Christian preaches with deeds and discussion, not accusations and condemnations. You should never listen to the person shouting the loudest in anything." ~ K.D. Worth, The Grim Life ~ K.D. Worth

Everything smells like mildew, and the grim commitment to filth that can only be cultivated by post-adolescent boys. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

In the grim darkness of the far future there is more than war. There are real people there too. ~ Dan Abnett

I've cheated the Grim Reaper more times than anyone I know. ~ Eddie Rickenbacker

Why hadn't he told me? Because I'd called him a liar and untrustworthy, and had made it plain I wasn't going to change my opinion, no matter what. Then why hadn't he told my brother, who did trust him?
That I couldn't answer. And in a sense it didn't matter. What did matter was that I had been wrong about Shevraeth. I had been so wrong I had nearly gotten a lot of people killed for no reason.
Just thinking it made me grit my teeth, and in a way it felt almost as bad as cleaning the fester from my wounded foot. Which was right, because I had to clean out from my mind the fester caused by anger and hatred. I remembered suddenly that horrible day in Galdran's dungeon when the Marquis had come to me himself and offered me a choice between death and surrender. "It might buy you time," he'd said.
At that moment I'd seen surrender as dishonor, and it had taken courage to refuse. He'd seen that and had acknowledged it in many different ways, including his words two days before about my being a heroine. Generous words, meant to brace me up. What I saw now was the grim courage it had taken to act his part in Galdran's Court, all the time planning to change things with the least amount of damage to innocent people. And when Branaric and I had come crashing into his plans, he'd included us as much as he could in his net of safety. My subsequent brushes with death were, I saw miserably now, my own fault.
I had to respect what he'd done. He'd come to respect us for our ~ Sherwood Smith

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death. ~ Eric Hoffer

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper. ~ Terry Pratchett

How deep was the grim sorter of the dark and the foul going to send me? ~ Andrew Davidson

I kicked back my heels, but all I achieved was to ride out of the panicked mass into the path of the Danes, and all around me men were screaming and the Danish axes and swords were chopping and swinging. The grim work, the blood feast, the song of the blade, they call it. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Holy shit, he was harder that a rod of steel, and as his leg ground out a torturous rhythm between my thighs, I realized I was hotter than spring in Seattle.
This was not a dream, this was real, and I had just fondled the boner of the Grim Reaper. ~ Tara West

Vaporized by the sun! Wasn't that what the universe had in store for all of us? There would come a day when the sun exploded like a red balloon, and everyone on earth would be reduced in less than a camera flash to carbon. Didn't Genesis say as much? For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. This was far more than dull old theology: It was precise scientific observation! Carbon was the Great Leveler
the Grim Reaper.
Diamonds were nothing more than carbon, but carbon in a crystal lattice that made it the hardest known mineral in nature. That was the way we all were headed. I was sure of it. We were destined to be diamonds! ~ Alan Bradley

Atheists are spiritual slackers, right? We are the stoners of the cosmos. We think we're all over-intelligent, free-thinking, free-spirited, uber-cool, hippy-dippy, science-minded, leaning-to-the-left, hedonistic, children of Theodorus the Atheist. We're all like "Dude, I don't need no stinkin' deity" and if we came face-to-face with the Grim Reaper himself we'd say, "No worries, Bro, let's do this! Game over! ~ T. K. Decker

A Brotherhood with the grim knowledge of what is better for other people & the iron determination to better them whether they like it or not. ~ Leonora Carrington

The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb. ~ Marshall McLuhan

How Could You Not - for Jane Kenyon

It is a day after many days of storms.
Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;
small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower
visible against the firs douses the crocuses.

We knew it would happen one day this week.
Now, when I learn you have died, I go
to the open door and look across at New Hampshire
and see that there, too, the sun is bright
and clouds are making their shadowy ways along the horizon;

and I think: How could it not have been today?
In another room, Keri Te Kanawa is singing
the Laudate Dominum of Mozart, very faintly,
as if in the past, to those who once sat
in the steel seat of the old mowing machine,
cheerful descendent of the scythe of the grim reaper,

and drew the cutter bars little
reciprocating triangles through the grass
to make the stalks lie down in sunshine.
Could you have walked in the dark early this morning
and found yourself grown completely tired
of the successes and failures of medicine,
of your year of pain and despair remitted briefly
now and then by hope that had that leaden taste?

Did you glimpse in first light the world as you loved it
and see that, now, it was not wrong to die
and that, on dying, you would leave
your beloved in a day like paradise?

Near sunrise did you loosen your hold a little?
How could you not ~ Galway Kinnell

Great Shakespeare!, you who can say everything, everything, everything exactly as it is – and yet why was this torment one you never gave voice to? Was it perhaps that you kept it to yourself, like the beloved whose name one still cannot bear the world to mention? For a poet buys this power of words to utter all the grim secrets of others at the cost of a little secret he himself cannot utter. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Part of my job at 'The Economist' was writing about HIV, and that included the grim task of reporting on the state of the global epidemic. ~ Shereen El Feki

I wondered how many other things had flown past me into death. Perhaps many. Perhaps I was flying past them, like the grim reaper, signaling the end. This would explain so much. ~ Miranda July

There's very little that frightens me more than the Grim Reaper when he's horny. ~ Larissa Ione

Gundar, seeing Halt upright for the first time in two days, stumped up the deck to join them.
'Back on your feet then?' he boomed cheerfully, with typical Skandian tact. 'By Gorlag's toenails, with all the heaving abd puking you've been doing, I thought you'd turn yourself inside out and puke yourself over the rail!'...
'You do paint a pretty picture, Gundar,' Will said...
'Thank you for your concern,' Halt said icily...
'So, did you find Albert?' Gundar went on, unabashed. Even Halt was puzzled by this sudden apparent change of subject.
'Albert?' he asked. Too late, he saw Gundar's grin widening and knew he'd stepped into a trap.
'You seemed to be looking for him. You'd lean over the rail and call, 'Al-b-e-e-e-e-e-r-t!' I thought he might be some Araluen sea god.'
'No, I didn't find him. Maybe I could look for him in your helmet.'
He reached out a hand. But Gundar had heard what happened when Skandians lent their helmets to the grim-faced Ranger while onboard ship...
'No, I'm pretty sure he's not there,' he said hurriedly. ~ John Flanagan

Moon and Sea
You are the moon, dear love, and I the sea:
The tide of hope swells high within my breast,
And hides the rough dark rocks of life's unrest
When your fond eyes smile near in perigee.
But when that loving face is turned from me,
Low falls the tide, and the grim rocks appear,
And earth's dim coast-line seems a thing to fear.
You are the moon, dear one, and I the sea. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

She had three days to ponder what that truth might be.Three days during which Dragon scarcely let her out of his sight. He went so far as to try to accompany her to the queen's solar, only to be shooed away by Ealhswith even as she smiled and took pains to reassure him.
"I promise you, my lord,the Lady Rycca will be as safe here as a babe in arms. Believe me, the quarters of the queen are not entered into by miscreants."
"That is all well and fine, majesty, but-"
"Should you not be aware,my lord, we had an incident here last year when the Lady Krysta was taken from Winchester by stealth. Since then, my lord husband has spared no effort to assure nothing of the sort can ever happen again." She gestured toward the grim-faced guards on watch in the corridor. "You will find the same beneath my windows, Lord of Landsende,and even above us on the roof. Not even an errant bird can enter here."
Even as she spoke, through the open door where she stood Dragon saw a raven alight on the sill of one of the solar's windows. Rather oddly, he thought, Krysta walked over and began talking to it.
"There are four new books in the scriptorium, my lord," the queen said, unaware of what was going on behind her, "and a young priest-a friend of Father Desmond, who is now at Hawkforte-who is responsible for one of them. By the way,he has a yen to travel."
That said,she shut the door not quite in his face but as close to it as that gently lady could ever come. Dragon hesi ~ Josie Litton

I'd been so tired of 'strong female characters' for so long by then. I was so tired of the way female strength was made to look cold and humorless; the way it was characterized as deviant and 'unnatural' and always lonely and exceptional. I was tired of the grim undertone of tragedy that lurked under its surface. 'Strong female characters' were never funny, and they never had any fun, either. More often than not, they were celibate, friendless, and clinically depressed. Their monomaniacal devotion to crime fighting made them lean, cranky, and impatient. Naturally, they had axes to grind: they were avenging brides, poker-faced assassins, gloomy ninjas with commitment issues. Who were these characters? What were they trying to tell us? Why didn't they ever say goodbye before hanging up the phone? And why were they always being reborn or remade as killing machines after losing everything they held dear?

...I don't want to see another symbolic woman start all over again. I want to see the symbolic world change to acknowledge her existence. I don't want to see a young girl get a makeover or go shopping with her boyfriend's credit card. I want to watch her blow up the Death Star - metaphorically, of course. ~ Carina Chocano

And a ride in a hearse tells us we're all close to that final cruise ... when the body dies and we move on. It's just the body, man. It's just the body. The soul's already gone. So don't be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It's empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that's lost its soul. Now that is scary, man. - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues. ~ David Mutti Clark

I follow her, my black shirt open and flying in the wind behind me like a vampire's cape. Either that or the grim reaper's. ~ Simone Elkeles

When I was up she taught me to recognize the feeling and savor it. "Remember how good you feel now," she said. "There will be times later on when everything will seem bleak. I don't want to minimize the grim and harsh times. I know how bad you feel then. But they won't last forever. Capture the good moments," she said. (219) ~ Lori Schiller

I didn't know the grim reaper looked like Sid Vicious. – Jen ~ Nessie Strange

I'm so happy dancing while the grim reaper
cuts, cuts, cuts, but he can't get me.
I'm as clever as can be, and I'm very quick but don't forget;
we've only got so many tricks.
no one lives forever. ~ Danny Elfman

The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies. ~ Lester B. Pearson