death-and-dying

Death descended like a theatrical storm over the Drakensberg Mountains, stranding me while it ran its course.

I can't tell whether a revived man would appreciate his second chance or yearn for the stolen serenity.

An acceptable death is a death which can be accepted or tolerated by the survivors. It has its antithesis: __he embarrassingly graceless dying,_ which embarrasses the survivors because it causes too strong an emotion to burst forth; and emotions must be avoided both in the hospital and everywhere in society. One does not have the right to become emotional other than in private, that is to say, secretly.

Indeed, in the majority of cases the dying person has already lost consciousness. Death had been dissected, cut to bits by a series of little steps, which finally makes it impossible to know which step was the real death, the one in which consciousness was lost, or the one in which breathing stopped. All these little silent deaths have replaced and erased the great dramatic act of death, and no one any longer has the strength or patience to wait over a period of weeks for a moment which has lost a part of its meaning.

Even as we live with the knowledge that each day might be our last, we don__ want to believe it.

How easy it would be just to let go, to go willingly into all that wonderful energy.

I have walked in Death to the very precipice of the Ninth Gate," Abhorsen said quietly. "I know the secrets and horrors of the Nine Precincts. I do not know what lies beyond, but everything that lives must go there, in the proper time. That is the rule that governs our work as the Abhorsen, but it also governs us. You are the fifty-third Abhorsen, Sabriel. I have not taught you as well as I should__et this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.

Too evident sorrow does not inspire pity but repugnance, it is the sign of mental instability or of bad manners: it is morbid.

The little queen__ mother and father had said that she would live on, for a long time, and that her tears would magnify the life around her forever more, but they had not explained how she should go about going on.

[In my dream] they slide their lips over my skin, whispering whispering whispering. They tell me their names, they tell me their lives, they tell me their pain...I can't struggle, I can't stop laughing, I can't resist these people who once were.

Death is the vehicle God uses to get us from here to where we are going. Before you take that ride, make sure you know in what direction you are heading.

She was infamous once upon a time. She's legendary now. The girl is a definite force to be reckoned with, though perhaps she doesn't know it yet.

You still are? There go my plans! And the suit I had bought to attend your funeral. Well, well. Anyway, do call me up when you an't.

Veins of ivy scale stones,find footholds butthe caretaker cuts earth short, peels creepers from Cotswold rock and props the deadhead to head so they won__topple like drunkson their moss-soft shadows.

It comes down to this. When we die, not only will our bodies be gone, but so will the people we remember. We live in the world, and we recall the world, and one day we won't do either anymore. The church bells will ring and the drunks will drink.

I've been ready to die since before you was Born!

People die. This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you__l always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there__l be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you__l die, and you__l probably be alone.

Perhaps we meet our heaven at the start and not the end of life.