Orson Scott Card Quotes on Death
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He is dead...because we have forgotten him.
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Time, time is such a fleeting, insubstantial thing. As Shakespeare said, 'I wasted time, and now doth time waste me'
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As long as you keep getting born, it's ok to die sometimes
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There are worse reasons to die, than to die because you cannot bear to kill What about someone who can't kill, and can't die, and can't live, either? Don't deceive yourself. You'll do all three someday
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Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand.
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It told us that death means something completely different to them. If you really believed that someone was perfect in heart... So righteous that to live another day could only cause them to be less perfect, then wouldn't it be a good thing for them if they were killed and taken directly into heaven?
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I carry the seeds of death with me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love. My parents died so others could live; now I live, so others must die.
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Who is more cursed, the one who dies, unknowing until the very moment of his death or the one who watched his destruction as it approached, step by step, for days and weeks and years?
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I really don't fear death. I never knew that.
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Even gentle people recognize that sometimes the decision not to kill is a decision to die.
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Life is a suicide mission.
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How do we remember? Is the brain a jar that holds our memories? Then when we die, does the jar break? Are our memories spilled on the ground and lost? Or is the brain a map that leads down twisted paths and into hidden corners? Then when we die, the map is lost but perhaps some explorer could wander through that strange landscape and find out the hiding places of our misplaced memories.
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God made us with death inside, and also with intelligence. We have our seventy years or so - perhaps ninety, with care - in the mountains of GA, a 130 is not unheard of, though I personally believe they are all liars. They would claim to be immortal if they thought they could get away with it. We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time. Surely you're not saying that god had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings! It's there in your own bible, Carlotta. Two trees of knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.
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Just because you're a fatalist doesn't mean I want to die.
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To face death, that's nothing much. But to feel really stupid when you die, well, that would be insufferable.
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All it did was let her step off that brink into the dark unknown with a smile on her face and pride in her heart. It made death sweet to her.
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I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way
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I'll be dead and you'll think about this day and wonder which of us was more the slave, you or me!
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But the fear of death in the one place was not as strong as another kind of fear, the fear of a world gone crazy, a place where anything could happen, where nothing could be trusted, where nothing was certain. A terrible place.
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The funny thing was, you see, that Mike Fink didn't think of himself as a murderer. He thought of life as a contest, and dying was what happened to those who came out second best, but it wasn't the same as murder, it was a fair fight
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They didn't have to believe in you. They didn't have to choose to die. But they didn't know that's what they was choosing They knew. We always know. We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all the life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death
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Our savior is guard enough for us all Our savior will resurrect us, but I haven't noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens
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In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?
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Death isn't the worst thing in the world Yes it is, you lose everything You keep your memories, in the end that's all we have
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He lived in one frozen, perfect moment - the moment when his heart was so full of love - no, not love. The moment when he decided, without love, that it would be better for his life, such as it was, to end than to have to watch [her] life end. It's is a moment that can be lived with for eternity
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All that you do is mortal - it is all born. It all dies. And yet you struggle against mortality and have overcome it, building up tremendous stores of shared knowledge through your finite books and your finite words. You put frames on everything Mass insanity, then. But it explains nothing about why you worship. You must come here to mock us. Not to mock you. To envy you Then die
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We have found a race that builds for the sheer joy of building, that creates beauty, that writes books, that invents the lives of never-known people to delight other who know they are being lied to, a race that devises immortal gods to worship and celebrates it's own mortality with immense pomp and glory. Death is the foundation of all that is great about humanity
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How is clean, painless nonexistence any worse than I clean, painless death?
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Ansset could clearly hear the fear singing through the back of his brave words. Well, why not? Death was certain now, and Ansset knew of no one, except perhaps an old man like Mikal, who could look at death, especially death that also meant failure, without some fear
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[he] looked death in the eye and did not seem disappointed
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Well here's some news for you, god, or gods: you can kill me, but until you do, you don't own me. I make my own choices, I go my own way. The storm will pass. The sand drops back down to the floor of the desert. And then you'll find out I was never sand at all, but a seed, and out of death I'll make life. You can't break me. And whatever plan you have in mind, you can't make me
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To be cut off from the land of the living, and yet not to be dead. How could I bear that? That's how most men live, and don't even know it
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He deserved to die except that nothing deserves death
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I know what warfare is and I reject it Of course you reject it. Who can kill you? You'll never die. But out there are millions of people who can die
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They're afraid of death! Can you at least imagine what that means? We fear death, too No... You resent death. You regret death. But as for your own life, you know perfectly well that no one can threaten it at all. Death is something that happens to someone else.
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[He] wanted to die. Not die too, because he wasn't going to think of [her] dying to especially of her already being dead. No, he wanted to die instead. A swap, a trade. Oh god, let me die instead. Put me on this bed and let her go on home... Let it be me they give up on. Let it be my plug they pull. Not [hers]
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Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time
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Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you. It was especially important for [him], because he was living for two
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Death's alright. But not worth going through any extra trouble to get here. You miss everything when you're here... Even the pain. Even the despair.
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I love only life. But life can only continue in the face of death.
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What are they afraid of? 'Dying first But they still die don't they?
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The truth was that neither the first nor the second test proved anything. But if they thought it proved something, he was just as dead.
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I never knew I love father till he lay there at the brink of death. Perhaps I never did love him, until he was nearly gone. It seemed a very powerful thought, until it occurred to him that justice probably put it into his mind
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There are worse reasons to die...than to die because you cannot bear to kill. (Speaker for the Dead)
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The opposite. I love only life. But life can only continue in the face of death. (The Worthing Saga)
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Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you. (Treasure Box)