Quotes
“Our savior will resurrect us,” said Peggy, “but I haven’t noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens.”
We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.
She don't set no store to see a king. Her pa a king back in Africa, and they shoot him dead. Them Portuguese slavers show her what it mean to be a king—it mean you die quick like everybody, and spill blood red like everybody, and cry out loud in pain and scared—oh, fine to be a king, and fine to see one. Do them White folk believe this lie?
“I don’t hold with prophets,” said Alvin. “Near as I can tell, they end up just as dead as the next man.”
That's what survival means, for me. I thought it was a matter of staying alive, but it isn't. Nobody lives forever anyway. It's how you're remembered. It's what your children thought of you, what they think of you after you're dead. That's survival.
I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way.
To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.
I could bear to suffer... so many have suffered. But why must it be like this? I have not deserved it. I have been true in friendship; I have faithfully nursed others in sickness... Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy?
I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes."
"No, it's not fair, but what makes life feel like Hell is our expectation that it should last forever. Life is short. Dead is forever. You will find out for yourself soon enough. It won't help the situation for you to get all upset."
"No one is discriminated against more than alive people discriminate against the dead. Nobody is as badly marginalized. If the dead are portrayed in popular culture it's as zombies...vampires...ghosts, always something threatening to the living."
