Anne Enright Quotes

It was despairing to find out that I am mortal.

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.

The Rebel bullet that can kill me has not yet been molded.

I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.

I realise how precious life is, probably because I've seen how it can be taken away.

Death threatens our speech with futility because death is not just a biological event - it is a reality we fear may rob our living of any significance.

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

When you look at death, it makes you understand the importance of the moment when you have life and death in front of you, and you witness seeing someone deteriorating in front of you - it's an overwhelming experience. If you don't learn from that, I don't know what else you're gonna learn.

Every fight could be my last.

I think we all lose in the end because we don't get to stay here forever.

From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.

Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you.

Every time someone in your life dies, you realize you're not invincible and you have to wonder if we're celebrating life or if we're mourning a death.

Because we are no different from any animal, any insect or germule. We are not special, Cal. You, me, we all came from nothing, and that's exactly where we're all going one day, maybe soon, whether we like it or not.

How little we have, I thought, between us and the waiting cold, the mystery, death--a strip of beach, a hill, a few walls of wood or stone, a little fire--and tomorrow's sun, rising and warming us, tomorrow's hope of peace and better weather . . . What if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise?

The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.

No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.

Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink.

I lost my brother when I was 22. He was only 24. I was always the kind of person to live on the edge, but after that, it made me feel like I could really die. It can really happen. Before then, I never thought it could happen to me or my family.

Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?

And he isn't crying for her, not for his grandma, he's crying for himself: that he: too, is going to die one day. And before that his friends wil die, and the friends of his friends, and, as time passes, the children of his friends, and, if his fate is truly bitter, his own children. (58)

I always know I can die at any moment.

Once you realise that heroes die, everything becomes that much more terrifying.

You realize mortality is everywhere.

When you've been in life-threatening situations, you become aware that life is not for ever.