A Quote by William T. Vollmann

Death cannot be experienced either by the dead or the living.

William T. Vollmann

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Cannot Dead Death Either Experienced Living

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William T. Vollmann
American - Novelist
Born: July 28, 1959

Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

Epicurus

So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.

Epicurus

How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it.

Cormac McCarthy

Fear cannot touch me… It can only taunt me, It cannot take me, Just tell me where to go… I can either follow, Or stay in my bed… I can hold on To the things that I know… The dead stay dead, They cannot walk. The shadows are darkness. And darkness cannot talk

Christopher Rice

Herman Melville is not comforting. Emily Dickinson isn’t either. Maybe their work is too hungry for comfort, or just too vivid for comfort. But Henry James is – profoundly so. Because he is tender. The tenderness is there in the structure of the sentence. He knows the way the poor and the dead are forgotten by the living, and he cannot allow that to happen. So he keeps on writing for them, for the dead, as if they were children to be sheltered and loved, never abandoned.

Susan Howe

You're either living or you're dead.

Lil Wayne

One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.

Storm Jameson

Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

W. Somerset Maugham

But how to know the falsity of death? How can we know there is no death? Until we know that, our fear of death will not go either. Until we know the falsity of death, our lives will remain false. As long as there is fear of death, there cannot be authentic life. As long as we tremble with the fear of death, we cannot summon the capacity to live our lives. One can live only when the shadow of death has disappeared forever. How can a frightened and trembling mind live? And when death seems to be approaching every second, how is it possible to live? How can we live?

Rajneesh

Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.

Langston Hughes

The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living.

Arlo Guthrie

There is a place on earth that is a vast desolate wilderness, a place populated by shadows of the dead in their multitudes, a place where the living are dead, where only death, hate and pain exist.

Giuliana Tedeschi Brunelli

If not for Death, they’d be content to simply exist, but with Death, well, their lives will have meaning — a boundary beyond which the living cannot cross.

Neil Gaiman

Man, when living, is soft and tender; when dead, he is hard and tough. All animals and plants when living are tender and delicate; when dead they become withered and dry. Therefore it is said: the hard and tough are parts of death; the soft and tender are parts of life.

Laozi

We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.

Eduardo Galeano

Hell was not for the living, it was for the dead, even the hallowed dead. Let the dead rest in peace. Someday Mack Bolan, too, would rest. For now, he had to find his way among the living.

Don Pendleton

A Quote by William T. Vollmann

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