Death Quote by Richard Yates — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.”

“Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.”

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”

“It's normal to shy away from illness and death. It's natural to gravitate toward laughter and life.”

“For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.”

“He hoped wherever he was going that there'd still be the sun and the moon and the stars. He'd spent a majority of his life with his head turned down. It seemed only fair that eternity would allow him to raise his face toward the sky.”

“Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.”

“The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark's underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he'd be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn't that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I'll look when the wet parts are rotted.”