death

"But my point, you see is that death is misunderstood. The loss of one's life is not the greatest loss. It is no loss at all. To others, perhaps, but not to oneself."

"Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life—a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple—the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last—it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer—there it is."

"Shapeshifting requires the ability to transcend your attachments, in particular your ego attachments to identity and who you are. If you can get over your attachment to labeling yourself and your cherishing of your identity, you can be virtually anybody. You can slip in and out of different shells, even different animal forms or deity forms."

"Yes, alive,” said Fudge. “That is — I don’t know — is a man alive if he can’t be killed? I don’t really understand it, and Dumbledore won’t explain properly — but anyway, he’s certainly got a body and is walking and talking and killing, so I suppose, for the purposes of our discussion, yes, he’s alive."

"A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me."

"The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but there was room there for humour, too."

"Don't feel bad, I'm usually about to die."

"To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little."

"[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine."

"... just because [butterflies'] lives were short didn't mean they were tragic... See, they have a beautiful life."

"Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust."

"No one here gets out alive."

"It’s odd, isn’t it? People die every day and the world goes on like nothing happened. But when it’s a person you love, you think everyone should stop and take notice. That they ought to cry and light candles and tell you that you’re not alone."

"Not only had my brother disappeared, but--and bear with me here--a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared."

"And then I crawled into his unmade bed, wrapping myself in his comforter like a cocoon, surrounding myself with his smell. I took out my cannula so I could smell better, breathing him and out, the scent fading even as I lay there, my chest burning until I couldn't distinguish among the pains."

"Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beasts below."

"He had a new girl, and I told him she looked like Marilyn Monroe. He smiled because he thought I meant she was beautiful, and I smiled because I meant she looked like a corpse."

"People living deeply have no fear of death."

"Our life is made by the death of others."

"I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died."