S. E. Hinton Quotes

For tis not in mere death that men die most.

Raven jerks and stiffens. For a second, I think she is only surprised: Her mouth goes round, her eyes wide. Then she begins teetering backward, and I know that she is dead. Falling, falling, falling . . .

Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.

(That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life.

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far distant.

Once in a while, when I'm alone, I think about my age. I think, How many more years do I have on this earth? But I can't really conceive of dying. Somehow, in my head, I don't think I'll die. I know that everybody dies, of course. I just think that it'll never come to me. It's crazy, but there it is.

My age makes me think how valuable life is. How bad is something like Parkinson's in relation to not having life at all?

Some people are paralyzed by the consciousness of death, other people live with it.... The fatwa certainly made me think about it a lot more than I ever had. I guess I know I'm going to die, but then, so are you.

The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life.

The first thing I think of when I wake up is how close I am to death. But then it gets better during the day.

think of it this way," he said "It took nine months to get you born, so doesn't it figure it would take nine months to get you dead?

But,' he thinks, 'it's possible to die before you die.

Are not the thoughts of the dying often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, visceral aspect, towards the "seamy side" of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, and which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death?

No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse.

We know that death never skips or spares anybody and that no one ever returns. And yet we go on like the blind, who see as little at midday as in the pitch-dark night. We do not take these examples to heart; we do not realize that today or tomorrow our turn will come.

Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.

Dying ain't in people's plans, is it?

Or so we don't think about how we're just vulnerable specks trying to survive on a violent, tumultuous planet, at the mercy of hurricanes and volcanoes and asteroids and terrorists and disease and a million other things. We concentrate on having little thoughts so we don't have BIG THOUGHTS. . . . You've got to ignore the one big truth - life is fatal.

When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.

I think leaving [death] can be as joyous as - probably more joyous than - being born, because being born is very physically uncomfortable for the baby.

All our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men.

Life can seem rather unreal at times. Alive and well and loving one day. No longer there the next.

Whenever someone dies, a part of the universe dies too. Everything a person felt, experience and saw dies with them, like tears in the rain.