“She hadn’t tied her scarf around her head yet this morning, and her bare scalp looked too soft, too fragile in the morning light, like a baby’s. It made Conor’s stomach hurt to see it.”
“And then she groaned, deep in her chest, her mouth still closed. It was a sound so painful, Conor could barely keep himself from putting his hands over his ears.”
“He went over and sat next to her on the side facing the window. She ran her hand through his hair, lifting it out of his eyes, and he could see how skinny her arm was, almost like it was just bone and skin.”
“I’ve known forever she wasn’t going to make it, almost from the beginning. She said she was getting better because that’s what I wanted to hear. And I believed her. Except I didn’t.”
″ ‘You be as angry as you need to be,’ she said. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.’ ”
“Tears formed in my eyes and my forehead became warm, thinking about what Saidu had said. I tried not to believe that I too was dying, slowly, on my way to find safety.”
“When that day comes, we’ll be waiting. Waiting for Charlie St. Cloud to come home to us. Until then we offer these parting words... May he live in peace.”
“Mama’s love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us.”
“Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun.”
“They were America’s elite fighters and the were going to die here, outnumbered by this determined rabble. Their future was setting with this sun on this day and in this place.”
“There are a thousand kinds of life and death across the whole metaphysical spectrum, not to mention the metaphorical. You don’t want to stay dead for the rest of your life, do you?”
“This, my darling, is the last letter I will write you. You know what the doctors have told me, you know that I am dying, and that I will not visit Black Mountain in August. And yet, I want you to know that I’m not afraid.”
“None of us wants to die. But it’s a possibility, and if you don’t accept that, it’s going to be in the back of your head the whole time, and you’re not going to be able to function. So you accept it, you realize that you’re not going to be able to talk to your family possibly ever again.”
“There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn’t really hit you, and then when it does, that’s when you feel like shit.”
“I’m not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you’re supposed to think are deep because they’re in italics. Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about sentences like this:
The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before.
Barf. Forget it. For me personally, things are in no way more meaningful because I got to know Rachel before she died. If anything, things are less meaningful. All right?”
“Crying, semi-hysterically, Mom made a number of points:
•Your friend is dying
•It’s just so hard to watch a child die
•And it’s much harder to watch a friend’s daughter die
•But the hardest is watching your son watching his friend die
•You have to make your own decisions now
•It’s so hard for me to let you make your own decisions
•But I have to let you make your own decisions
•I am so proud of you
•Your friend is dying, and you have been so strong.”
“Nothing stands still - everything is being born, growing, dying - the very instant a thing reaches its height, it begins to decline - the law of rhythm is in constant operations.”
“A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men’s loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake.”
″‘...is there anyone in the class who’s not worried about getting old?’
Simon’s hand went up. ‘I’m not,’ he said.
‘Good, Simon.’ exclaimed Ms. Kidman in relief. ‘Why’s that?’ And suddenly I saw her try to stop herself, as she realized what was coming.
‘Well, I’m not going to get to old age, am I?’ replied Simon. ‘I’m going to be dead first.‘”
“I’m going to die, he thought, just because of this Thing that has never helped us at all, something that’s just a lump of stuff, and now I’m going to die and go to the Heavens.”
“I wonder if old Torrit is right about what happens when you die. It seems a bit severe to have to die to find out. I’ve looked at the sky every night for years, and I’ve never seen any nomes up there...”
″‘Human life has sorrow;’ ‘They who meet must part;’ ‘He that is born must die;’ ‘It is foolish to count the years of a child that is gone, but a woman’s heart will indulge in follies;‘”
“I can’t make sense of it. If my weight isn’t enough to get Mom to wake up, then nothing will be. And if nothing can wake her up, then that means she’s really going to die. And if she’s really going to die, what am I supposed to do with myself? My life purpose has always been to make Mom happy, to be who she wants me to be. So without Mom, who am I supposed to be now?”
“I think you should know that I make up a lot of stuff in my head and then get sad about it. I like to sleep and I like to blog. I am going to die someday.”
“I can see some of the roses still blooming in my mother´s garden. Brown on the edges and bright in other colors, their petals drooping downward, dying just as their lives have begun. They stayed past their time, and I´ve realized that I have too”
“‘You think I don’t know what your life is like just because I ain’t living it? I know what every colored woman in this country is doing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Dying., Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.’”
″...if I die tonight I’m in a state of sin for stealing and I could go straight to hell stuffed with fish and chips but it’s Saturday and if the priests are still in the confession boxes I can clear my soul after my feed.”
“Miro pondered what she was thinking. Did she suspect that she would die before this incident was over? Has she seen through Artkin’s lies, even though he lied to skillfully?”
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
“It is easy in a moment like this to want to speak over this woman, to tell Tia there is nothing more we can do, to say out loud the woman is lucky that her lungs still draw breath. But I learned young, you do not speak of the dying as if they are already dead.”
“So why do I feel so guilty? I don’t sleep so good at night. I keep seein’ the fire and hearin’ his screams and feelin’ so helpless. He was too young to die like that. It’s not fair. He never had a chance. Was all this done to teach us kids a lesson? Will it stop us from drinkin’ and drivin’? Maybe—a few.”
“Thursday February 12th. Lincoln’s birthday. I found my mother dyeing her hair in the bathroom tonight. This has come as complete shock to me. For thirteen and three-quarter years I have thought I had a mother with red hair, now I found out that it is really light brown. My mother asked me no to tell my father. What a state their marriage must be in!”
“She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this ‘must’. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.”
″‘Would you hold me when my time is come? I am at peace. Do not grieve.’
‘If I grieve,’ I said, ‘it is not for you, but for myself, beloved, for how shall I endure to live without you, who are my love and my life?‘”
“Adieu, farewell earth’s bliss,
This world uncertain is;
Fond are life’s lustful joys,
Death proves them all but toys,
None from his darts can fly.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us!”
“If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
‘He was one who had an eye for such mysteries’?”
“In Yorkshire to be old-fashioned means to be fashioned-old, not necessarily to be out of date, but I think that I am probably both. For it is rather out of date, even though I will be eighteen this February, to have had a mother who died when one was born and it is to be fashioned-old to have the misfortune to be and look like me.”
“She saw her future ahead of her, bleak and unbearable and unavoidable. She dared not die, and yet she would hardly be alive, unable to marry, unable even to think about the subject herself, lest she discover the deadly secret and inadvertently let it slip; alone forever, burdened forever, guilty forever, yearning for death but forbidden to reach for it.”
“Now Lorraine can blame all the other things on me, but she was the one who picked out the Pigman’s phone number. If you ask me, I think he would have died anyway. Maybe we speeded things up a little, but you really can’t say we murdered him.”
“Assure yourselves, O King and Queen, that you daughter shall not die of this disaster. it is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done. The Princess shall indeed pierce her hand with a spindle; but, instead of dying, she shall only fall into a profound sleep, which shall last one hundred years, at the expiration of which a King’s son shall come and awake her.”
“Oh, they were so tired of their lives. To die like this was better than to live as they had been doing, going nowhere but where Owl led them, always in darkness, scraping their feet raw for a few grains.”
“Thus the maid went from illness to illness until, one day, she died. Alfanhui and his master buried her in the garden with a headstone etched in vinegar saying: Selfless and Silent.”
“There are some things you never forget. Never, ever, ever shall I forget that first evening in the kitchen at Knights Farm, how wonderful it was and what it felt like to lie talking to Jonathan just as before.”
″‘Kings and princes have brought entire armies to free the princess,’ said the fairy, ‘and every last one of them died.’
‘All I have are my will and my courage,’ said the youth.”
“If I don’t die in a fortnight I am to live to be a shrivelled old man. I’d rather take a happy medium, and look forward to coming back before my liver is all gone, or my temper all destroyed, with lots of money to make you and the girls comfortable.”
″‘If I die,’ I say as we look at the view, ‘I mean, when I die, throw my ashes in the water of the tiny beach. Then when you miss me, you can climb up here, look down, and think how awesome I was.‘”
“She is dying. It will not be long now. It will be much difference, mark me, whether she dies conscious or in her sleep. Wake that poor boy, and let him come and see the last; he trusts us, and we have promised him.”
With the wreck of her frail body, Beth’s soul grew strong, and though she said little, those about her felt that she was ready, saw that the first pilgrim called was likewise the fittest, and waited with her on the shore, trying to see the Shining Ones coming to receive her when she crossed the river.
“Whatever he may pretend, he wishes to provoke Edgar to desperation: he says he has married me on purpose to obtain power over him; and he sha’n’t obtain it—I’ll die first! I just hope, I pray, that he may forget his diabolical prudence and kill me!”
I’ve got your letters, and if you give me any pertness I’ll send them to your father. I presume you grew weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn’t you? Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really. As true as I live, he’s dying for you; breaking his heart at your fickleness: not figuratively, but actually.
He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart—that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling—they would simply have looked into each other’s faces, and Konstantin could only have said, “You’re dying, you’re dying!” and Nikolay could only have answered, “I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.