Living Death Quotes

“You ask: Why is the malady of death fatal? She answers: Because whoever has it doesn't know he's a carrier, of death. And also because he's like to die without any life to die to, and without even knowing that's what he's doing.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Malady of Death

“Just living until you die is hard work," I said”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was no dream at all.
       I was still fighting against the awful truth, not wanting to give in, searching my mind for a logical explanation—but there was none. And the most horrible realization of all was that I had known, somewhere deep inside, ever since the day I first set eyes on Vladec Salei.
       Plague carrier.
       Living death.
       Drainer of life.
       The phrasing did not matter. No euphemism could strike fear into the hearts of men the way that single word could.
       Vampire.
        And for me, the uninitiated, that single word meant death.”
― Melika Dannese Lux, Corcitura

“The revolution loves and creates life; and in order to create life it may be obliged to prevent some men from circumscribing life. In addition to the life-death cycle basic to nature, there is almost an unnatural living death: life which is denied its fullness.”
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“For whilst I live, here lives my soul's sole hope,
And when I die, here shall my spirit walk.”
― Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

“He wasn’t dying—he was being harvested. Flayed alive by nerves that refused silence, each breath shredded like lungs packed with razors. A blink drew blood. A thought detonated fire. His studio became a mausoleum, and he, its invalid—crucified, disowned by his own biology. He had begged for the compound that once shackled the torment—denied. They called it withdrawal; he knew it as state-sanctioned mutilation. His fingers clawed through endless typos, desperate to name the unnamable. Even his phone collapsed mid-sentence, unable to carry one more fragment of his possession. He wasn’t sick. He was erased. Invalidated. A failed experiment rotting in plain view, too grotesque for rescue. And still he burned.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia