Simon's Death Quotes

Simon!” The voice was Clary’s. He would know it anywhere. He wondered if his mind was conjuring it up now, a sense memory of what he’d most loved during life to carry him through the process of death. “Simon, you stupid idiot! I’m over here! At the window!” Simon jumped to his feet. He doubted his mind would conjure that up.

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

There are any number of magical creatures, mostly female, whose singing can bring about horror and death. Sirens, undines, banshees, Bananarama tribute bands...

In Alexander's life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.

Should you ever feel too lonely...listen for the roar of the sea- for in it are all those who've been and all those who are to come.

I wish my life was a John Grisham novel. His heroes always seem to be one step away from death but come up with a brilliant plan. Unfortunately, real life can’t be wrapped up with a nice little bow

Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?

Death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept.

This misfortune you find is of your own manufacture. Keep hold of what you have, it will harm no other, for hatred comes home to the hand that chose it.

Simon whispered to me, “But is everything okay?” “No,” Tori said. “I kidnapped her and forced her to escape with me. I’ve been using her as a human shield against those guys with guns, and I was just about to strangle her and leave her body here to throw them off my trail. But then you showed up and foiled my evil plans. Lucky for you, though. You get to rescue poor little Chloe again and win her undying gratitude.” “Undying gratitude?” Simon looked at me. “Cool. Does that come with eternal servitude? If so, I like my eggs sunnyside up.” I smiled. “I’ll remember that.” *** “Oh, right. You must be starving.” Simon reached into his pockets. “I can offer one bruised apple and one brown banana. Convenience stores aren’t the place to buy fruit, as I keep telling someone.” “Better than these. For you, anyway, Simon.” Derek passed a bar to Tori. “Because you aren’t supposed to have those, are you?” I said. “Which reminds me…” I took out the insulin. “Derek said it’s your backup.” “So my dark secret is out.” “I didn’t know it was a secret.” “Not really. Just not something I advertise.” ... “Backup?” Tori said. “You mean he didn’t need that?” “Apparently not,” I murmured. Simon looked from her to me, confused, then understanding. “You guys thought…” “That if you didn’t get your medicine in the next twenty-four hours, you’d be dead?” I said. “Not exactly, but close. You know, the old ‘upping the ante with a fatal disease that needs medication’ twist. Apparently, it still works.” “Kind of a letdown, then, huh?” “No kidding. Here we were, expecting to find you minutes from death. Look at you, not even gasping.” “All right, then. Emergency medical situation, take two.” He leaped to his feet, staggered, keeled over, then lifted his head weakly. “Chloe? Is that you?” He coughed. “Do you have my insulin?” I placed it in his outstretched hand. “You saved my life,” he said. “How can I ever repay you?” “Undying servitude sounds good. I like my eggs scrambled.” He held up a piece of fruit. “Would you settle for a bruised apple?” I laughed.

This Zippo read, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.. for I'm the baddest motherfucker in the valley.

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

There's no reason why women shouldn't behave like rational beings," Simon asserted stolidly. Poirot said drily: "Quite frequently they do. That is even more upsetting!

Has there ever been an Inquisitor who didn't die a horrible death?" Simon wondered out loud. " It's like being the drummer in Spinal Tap.

There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.

A man doesn't want to feel that a woman cares more for him than he cares for her. He doesn't want to feel owned, body and soul. It's that damned possessive attitude. This man is mine---he belongs to me! He wants to get away --- to get free. He wants to own his woman; he doesn't want her to own him.(Simon Boyle)

Simon!" The voice was faint, but his hearing caught it over the pop and crackle of glowing flames. The smoke in the corridor had presaged heat; the heat was here now, pressing against him like an oppressive wall. "Simon!" The voice was Clary's. He would know it anywhere. He wondered if his mind was conjuring it up now, a sense of memory of what he'd most loved during life to carry him throught the process of death. "Simon, you stupid idiot! I'm over here! At the window!" Simon jumped to his feet. he doubted his mind would conjure that up.

When someone you love dies you pay for the sin of outliving her with a thousand piercing regrets.

This was Jace being brave. Simon thought, brave and snarky because he thought Lilith was going to kill him, and that was the way he wanted to go, unafraid and on his feet. Like a warrior. The way Shadowhunters did. His death song would always be this-jokes and snideness and pretend arrogance, and that look in his eyes that said 'I'm better than you'. Simon just hadn't realized it before.

Shura, I’m yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consultation for death.

An overhead light blinked and extinguished. Armitage drew the pistol with his right hand. He swung and aimed, checking there were no innocent people obstructing the way. None. Fired a single shot. It sailed over a plant and table setting. The round hit an inch from the watcher's heart. On impact the brown-haired assailant tipped. Jake ducked. A table toppled. The watcher groaned as the force of the momentum pushed him toward the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. A second table collapsed, plates thrown asunder. Jake stepped forward, arm stretched and gun straight. A waitress hugged herself, crying. Two more male patrons hit the floor and crawled between chairs.

When I think of Simone now, I think of butterfly wings. Beautiful and excruciatingly delicate. Touch them once and they might disintegrate.

Death itself does not frighten me; it is the jump I am afraid of.

If I am to die tonight, let me die a fighter.

Love needs reality. What is more terrible than the discovery that through a bodily appearance we have been loving an imaginary being. It is much more terrible than death, from death does not prevent the Beloved from having lived. That is the punishment for having fed love on imagination.

Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed.

Oh dire, dreadful death, you drag your heels. Why dawdle and draw back? You drown my heart.

But it is impossible for anyone to say ‘I am sacrificing myself’ without feeling bitterness.

And she wept as well for the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and the loss she had endured, and she wept for Emma and the Blackthorns, remembering how they had fought back tears when she had told them that she had seen Mark in the tunnels of Faerie, and how he belonged to the Hunt now, and she wept for Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and the she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.

It must be said in addition that the men with the most scrupulous respect for embryonic life are also those who are most zealous when it comes to condemning adults to death in war.

Death makes cynics of us all

War was the ultimate chaos, a pounding, soul-destroying snarl, ending in blown-apart men lying unburied on the cold earth. There was nothing more cosmically chaotic than war.

What was she thinking?” muttered Alexander, closing his eyes and imagining his Tania. “She was determined. It was like some kind of a personal crusade with her,” Ina said. “She gave the doctor a liter of blood for you—” “Where did she get it from?” “Herself, of course.” Ina smiled. “Lucky for you, Major, our Nurse Metanova is a universal donor.” Of course she is, thought Alexander, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Ina continued. “The doctor told her she couldn’t give any more, and she said a liter wasn’t enough, and he said, ‘Yes, but you don’t have more to give,’ and she said, ‘I’ll make more,’ and he said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and in four hours, she gave him another half-liter of blood.” Alexander lay on his stomach and listened intently while Ina wrapped fresh gauze on his wound. He was barely breathing. “The doctor told her, ‘Tania, you’re wasting your time. Look at his burn. It’s going to get infected.’ There wasn’t enough penicillin to give to you, especially since your blood count was so low.” Alexander heard Ina chuckle in disbelief. “So I’m making my rounds late that night, and who do I find next to your bed? Tatiana. She’s sitting with a syringe in her arm, hooked up to a catheter, and I watch her, and I swear to God, you won’t believe it when I tell you, Major, but I see that the catheter is attached to the entry drip in your IV.” Ina’s eyes bulged. “I watch her draining blood from the radial artery in her arm into your IV. I ran in and said, ‘Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? You’re siphoning blood from yourself into him?’ She said to me in her calm, I-won’t-stand-for-any-argument voice, ‘Ina, if I don’t, he will die.’ I yelled at her. I said, ‘There are thirty soldiers in the critical wing who need sutures and bandages and their wounds cleaned. Why don’t you take care of them and let God take care of the dead?’ And she said, ‘He’s not dead. He is still alive, and while he is alive, he is mine.’ Can you believe it, Major? But that’s what she said. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘Fine, die yourself. I don’t care.’ But the next morning I went to complain to Dr. Sayers that she wasn’t following procedure, told him what she had done, and he ran to yell at her.” Ina lowered her voice to a sibilant, incredulous whisper. “We found her unconscious on the floor by your bed. She was in a dead faint, but you had taken a turn for the better. All your vital signs were up. And Tatiana got up from the floor, white as death itself, and said to the doctor coldly, ‘Maybe now you can give him the penicillin he needs?’ I could see the doctor was stunned. But he did. Gave you penicillin and more plasma and extra morphine. Then he operated on you, to get bits of the shell fragment out of you, and saved your kidney. And stitched you. And all that time she never left his side, or yours. He told her your bandages needed to be changed every three hours to help with drainage, to prevent infection. We had only two nurses in the terminal wing, me and her. I had to take care of all the other patients, while all she did was take care of you. For fifteen days and nights she unwrapped you and cleaned you and changed your dressings. Every three hours. She was a ghost by the end. But you made it. That’s when we moved you to critical care. I said to her, ‘Tania, this man ought to marry you for what you did for him,’ and she said, ‘You think so?’ ” Ina tutted again. Paused. “Are you all right, Major? Why are you crying?

The voice was Clary's. He would know it from anywhere. He wondered if his mind was conjuring it up now, a sense memory of what he'd most loved during his life to carry him through the process of death. "Simon, you stupid idiot! I'm over here! At the window!

Belief in immortality is harmful because it is not in our power to conceive of the soul as really incorporeal. So this belief is in fact a belief in the prolongation of life, and it robs death of its purpose.

Simon had shamelessly tried to curry favor with Isabelle’s father by teaching Robert Lightwood how to use Simon’s digital watch as a timer. Robert was now holding the watch in a death grip and studying it carefully. It would be Robert’s turn with the baby again in sixteen minutes, and he had clasped Simon’s shoulder and said, “Thanks, son,” which Simon took as a blessing to date Robert’s daughter.

But George turned Simon's assumptions on their head on a daily basis. As he was doing right at this moment, wiping away something that looked suspiciously like a tear. "Are you... Crying?" Simon asked, Incredulous. "Of course not." George gave his eyes another furious wipe. "Well, in my defense," he added, sounding only slightly abashed, "death is a terrible thing." "It's a dead rat," Simon pointed out. "A dead rat in Your Shoe, I might add.

Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.

Nie ma drugich szans, są tylko inne. Jakąkolwiek podejmiesz decyzję, życie zawsze będzie inne niż wtedy, gdybyś podjął inną.

Of all the ways I had imagined my death, getting beaten by my zombified mentor while trapped by a cannibalistic window handle wasn’t one of them

I believed in Oxford, and cobblestoned squares, and old bricks thick with ivy,a nd rainy days curled up reading books. I believed in my mother's strong coffee and in the lonely, aching scent of early dawn before anyone else in my boardinghouse was awake. I believed in my favorite men's cardigan and the way the wind felt on the back of my neck. I believed in life as it lay before me, spinning out slowly, day after day of warm springs and thunderstorms and laughter. These were the things I believed in.

The fear of death never left me; I couldn't get used to the thought; I would still sometimes shake and weep with terror. By contrast, the fact of existence here and now sometimes took on a glorious splendour.

But a novel always ends, the lies come to the surface, and the deaths are explained. Maybe one of the bad characters gets away with something—that’s fashionable right now—but you are still left with a sense that things are balanced, that dark things come to light, and that the bad person will, at least, most likely be miserable.

Du jour où il nait, l'homme commence à mourir; c'est la vérité qu'incarne la Mère.

Death is only one of many ways to lose your life.

Simon sipped at his coffee. “Everything in life is a hallucination,” he said simply. “Everything in death, too,” he added. “The universe is just putting us on. Handing us a line.

A strong realization hits me. Any of us could die at any minute. In a second... we could die. Fall apart. Gone.

The Field of Mars, June, death, life, white nights, Dasha, Dimitri, the all came… And went. But there Alexander still was, standing on that street, on that curb, in the sun, looking at her under the elms, looking at provenance across from him provenance in a white dress with red roses, licking her ice cream with red lips, singing. His and only his for one hundred minutes, blink of an eye and gone. It all was.

Man's great affliction, which begins with infancy and accompanies him till death, is that looking and eating are two different operations. Eternal beatitude is a state where to look is to eat.

Along with Alec’s blood, Simon could taste the metal of fear, the spark of pain, and the eager flame of something else, something he had tasted the first time he had drunk Jace’s blood on the filthy metal floor of Valentine’s ship. Maybe all Shadowhunters did have a death wish, after all.

Curiosity is a good thing, like onion soup. But too much onion soup makes your breath smell terrible. And too much curiosity can make your whole body smell terrible, if it causes you to be dead.

Look at the moon up there. You see her very plainly, don't you? She's very real. But if the sun were to shine you wouldn't be able to see her at all. It was rather like that. I was the moon... When the sun came out, Simon couldn't see me anymore... He was dazzled. He couldn't see anything but the sun — Linnet.

He heard bombs exploding like fireworks, and as if in a dream his father's face flashed before him, wanting to know what Alexander was doing near death's door before it was his time. He said, "Dad, I'm going for her.

The poor die on flea-infested straw, and the rich on down pillows, Simon thought. But no matter where they are, people die. Death makes no exceptions.

Please don’t choke to death, Bunce. Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.

It must be added that the men who most respect embryonic life are the same ones who do not hesitate to send adults to death in war.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.

Simon was still hoping that somewhere in the Sadowhunter manual was the secret of the Vulcan death grip. After all, as his instructors kept reminding them: All the stories are true.

The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth and the death of self.

Song after Battle: As the young men went by I was looking for him. It surprises me anew That he has gone. It is something To which I cannot be reconciled. Owls hoot at me. Owls hoot at me. That is what I hear In my life. Wolves howl at me. Wolves howl at me. That is what I hear In my life. -American Indian Songs

Aujourd'hui, je n'ai pas vécu

Then, breathing slow, and almost deliberately, stops. But for a moment the old man doesn’t realize he is dead. He can feel Martin’s heart and mistakes it for his own.

Śmierć, ów proces alchemii na wspak, w którym złoto życia ulega rozbiciu na cuchnące składniki wyjściowe.

Ghosts are the only ones who never have to feel scared. Because the worst thing in the world has already happened to them.

For the first time I saw her as a dead body under suspended sentence.

She had appetites in plenty: she spent all her strength in repressing them and she underwent this denial in anger.

It's kinda hard to get yourself into a good three-toweler when you got the dick of death.

There’s nothing like a major emergency and the almost certain death of the whole damned world to concentrate the mind wonderfully.

When the sun shines you cannot see the moon," he said. "But when the sun is gone--ah, when the sun is gone.

You suspected me of murder?” I said. “I suspect everyone of murder,” he replied.

You're never so alive as when you're on the verge of death.

As we talked in the half-darkness I assuaged an old unhappiness.

... and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even a change for the better felt like a little death.

Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces. Though they are masters of the atomic bomb, yet it is created only to destroy them. Each one has the incomparable taste in his mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth's. Perhaps in no other age have they manifested their grandeur more brilliantly, and in no other age has this grandeur been so horribly flouted. In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men.

Backup?" Tori said. "You mean he didn't need that?" "Apparently not," I murmured. Simon looked from her to me, confused, then understanding. "You guys thought..." "That if you didn't get your medicine in the next twenty-four hours, you'd be dead?" I said. "Not exactly, but close. You know, the old 'upping the ante with a fatal disease that needs medication' twist. Apparently, it still works." "Kind of a letdown, then, huh?" "No kidding. Here we were, expecting to find you minutes from death. Look at you, not even gasping." "All right, then. Emergency medical situation, take two." He leaped to his feet, staggered, keeled over, then lifted his head weakly. "Chloe? Is that you?" He coughed. "Do you have my insulin?" I placed it in his outstretched hand. "You saved my life," he said. "How can I ever repay you?" "Undying servitude sounds good. I like my eggs scrambled." He held up a piece of fruit. "Would you settle for a bruised apple?

She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord." "Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that," Simon said. "It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever you like." "I suppose you have some definite ideas about an afterlife." "Sure. We get reabsorbed into the earthly and celestial mechanism." "No heaven?" "That's heaven." "What about realms of glory? What about walking around in golden slippers?" "We abandon consciousness as if we were waking from a bad dream. We throw it off like clothes that never fit us right. It's an ecstatic release we're physically unable to apprehend while we're in our bodies. Orgasm is our best hint, but it's crude and minor by comparison.

They stared at each other. Every ocean, every river, every minute they had walked together was in their gaze. He said nothing and she said nothing. She kneeled by him, her hands on him, on his chest, on his heart, on his lungs that took air in but could not move air out, on his open wound; her eyes were on him, and in their eyes was every block of uncounted, unaccounted-for time, every moment they had lived since June 22, 1941, the day war started for the Soviet Union. Her eyes were filled with everything she felt for him. Her eyes were true.

Simone was tall and lovely. She was usually very natural; there was nothing heartbreaking in her eyes or her voice. But on a sensual level, she so bluntly craved any upheaval that the faintest call from the senses gave her a look directly suggestive of all things linked to deep sexuality, such as blood, suffocation, sudden terror, crime; things indefinitely destroying human bliss and honesty.

And you realize that you've finally grown up. That youth has finished. In its place you have knowledge, which you must carry. You must also learn to accept that death is the most sophisticated form of beauty, and the most difficult to accept. From this moment on, you will always be conscious of what you are doing. And any future feeling, whether joy or grief or excitement or regret, will come now with an awareness of its own end - with shadows you never noticed in youth. Variation of feeling will become depth of feeling. And you will appreciate tiny things - and step with the confidence of someone overjoyed to know he is doomed.

For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed lifelong Quaker, has written that it took looking into mass graves in former Yugoslavia to convince him that force is sometimes the only option to deter our species' murderous impulses. While we're on the subject of the horrors of war, and humanity's most poisonous and least charitable attributes, let me not forget to mention Barbara Bush (that would be former First Lady and presidential mother as opposed to W's liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter. I'm sorry, that's not fair. I've no idea if she smokes.) When the administration censored images of the flag-draped coffins of the young men and women being killed in Iraq - purportedly to respect "the privacy of the families" and not to minimize and cover up the true nature and consequences of the war - the family matriarch expressed her support for what was ultimately her son's decision by saying on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Mrs. Bush is not getting any younger. When she eventually ceases to walk among us we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag-draped coffin. Whatever obituaries that run will admiringly mention those wizened, dynastic loins of hers and praise her staunch refusal to color her hair or glamorize her image. But will they remember this particular statement of hers, this "Let them eat cake" for the twenty-first century? Unlikely, since it received far too little play and definitely insufficient outrage when she said it. So let us promise herewith to never forget her callous disregard for other parents' children while her own son was sending them to make the ultimate sacrifice, while asking of the rest of us little more than to promise to go shopping. Commit the quote to memory and say it whenever her name comes up. Remind others how she lacked even the bare minimum of human integrity, the most basic requirement of decency that says if you support a war, you should be willing, if not to join those nineteen-year-olds yourself, then at least, at the very least, to acknowledge that said war was actually going on. Stupid fucking cow.

Tetu stood his seven feet straight as a yardstick. His chin tilted upward. He was unable to mouth the words to the hymns. This struggle to hold back a torrent of tears consumed him. Yet he found the joyful noise soothing. What he was thinking in those minutes was, “Let this go on forever. Bang the death drum slowly. Bugler, play Taps for an eternity. I do not want the time to come when I’ll have to commit the bodies of these three people I have so loved to a cold place beneath the soil.”  

Cool morning shadows sadly shift across the floor Each time we say goodbye it’s harder than before Even after all the pain of parting still we find That we must mourn the death of the dreams we leave behind As I turn my back on all that means the most to me The sounds and smells, the light that dances on the sea The greatest gamble is to act on the belief That only the slave who leaves it all is truly free The sacrifice that we both lay before His feet A thousand moments that belonged to us That now will never be By faith we hold a better dream inside our hearts A time when our family will never have to be apart Till then we struggle with just what it really means And we will mourn the death of our beautiful dreams Mourn the death of our beautiful dreams

The Marshal didn’t bother knocking. What he observed was not unexpected, but still shocking. The sequoia of a man, seven feet tall and 360 hard-packed pounds of him, lay with back curled forward, limbs folded in front of his body, on the living room floor, moaning, with periodic sharp intakes of breath accentuating his spiritual desolation. 

Our lives are not the legacy we leave behind, or the value of the work that we do. Our lives happen inbetween the deeds and ideas that define us. Each of us feels it, the mystery, the strangeness of life on earth. Of life and death. We feel it when we travel, we feel it when we stay at home. We feel it when a loved one dies or when a loved one is born.

You might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. I create myself constantly through action, and this is so fundamental to my human condition that, for Sartre, it is the human condition, from the moment of first consciousness to the moment when death wipes it out. I am my own freedom: no more, no less.

In one hallway, the floor gleaming parquet and the ceiling festooned with golden cherubs, there was a boy in a grumpy cat mask and biker boots, not involved in any sexual activity, legs crossed and leaning against the wall. As a bevy of faeries passed the boy, giggling and groping, the boy scooted away. Alec remembered being younger, and how overwhelming large groups of people had seemed. He came over and leaned against the wall beside the boy. He saw the boy texting, PARTIES WERE INVENTED TO ANNOY ME. THEY FEATURE MY LEAST FAVORITE THING: PEOPLE, ALL INTENT ON MY LEAST FAVORITE ACTIVITY: SOCIAL INTERACTION. “I don’t really like parties either,” Alec said sympathetically. “No hablo italiano,” the boy mumbled without looking up. “Er,” said Alec. “This conversation is happening in English.” “No hablo ingles,” he said without missing a beat. “Oh, come on. Really?” “Worth a shot,” said the boy. Alec considered going away. The boy wrote another text to a contact he had saved as RF. Alec could not help but notice that the conversation was entirely one-sided, the boy sending text after text with no response. The last text read VENICE SMELLS LIKE A TOILET. AS A NEW YORKER, I DO NOT SAY THIS LIGHTLY. The weird coincidence emboldened Alec to try again. “I get shy when there are strangers too,” Alec told the kid. “I’m not shy,” the boy sneered. “I just hate everyone around me and everything that is happening.” “Well.” Alec shrugged. “Those feel like similar things sometimes.” The boy lifted his curly head, pushing the grumpy cat mask off his face, and froze. Alec froze too, at the twin shock of fangs and familiarity. This was a vampire, and Alec knew him. “Raphael?” he asked. “Raphael Santiago?” He wondered what the second-in-command of the New York clan was doing here. Downworlders might be flooding in from all over the world, but Raphael had never struck Alec as a party animal. Of course, he was not exactly coming off as a party animal now. “Oh no, it’s you,” said Raphael. “The twelve-year-old idiot.” Alec was not keen on vampires. They were, after all, people who had died. Alec had seen too much death to want reminders of it. He understood that they were immortal, but there was no need to show off about it. “We just fought a war together. I was with you in the graveyard when Simon came back as a vampire. You’ve seen me multiple times since I was twelve.” “The thought of you at twelve haunts me,” Raphael said darkly. “Okay,” Alec said, humoring him. “So have you seen a guy called Mori Shu anywhere around here?” “I am trying not to make eye contact with anyone here,” said Raphael. “And I’m not a snitch for Shadowhunters. Or a fan of talking to people, of any kind, in any place.” Alec rolled his eyes.

She asked us to raise the curtain that was covering the window and she looked at the golden leaves of the trees. 'How lovely. I shouldn't see that from my flat!' She smiled. And both of us, my sister and I, had the same thought: it was that same smile that had dazzled us when we were little children, the radiant smile of a young woman. Where had it been between then and now?

Yet I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did. I think with sadness of all the books I’ve read, all the places I’ve seen, all the knowledge I’ve amassed and that will be no more. All the music, all the paintings, all the culture, so many places: and suddenly nothing. ... If it had at least enriched the earth; if it had given birth to… what? A hill? A rocket? But no. Nothing will have taken place. I can still see the hedge of hazel trees flurried by the wind and the promises with which I fed my beating heart while I stood gazing at the gold-mine at my feet: a whole life to live. The promises have all been kept. And yet, turning an incredulous gaze towards that young and credulous girl, I realise with stupor how much I was gypped.

Who are you?” Her eyes snapped open, and her voice held a hysterical edge. “Do I even know who you are?” He stepped over Walker’s battered corpse and grabbed her by the shoulders, leaned down so that his no-doubt foul breath washed over her face. “I am your husband, my lady.” She turned her face away from him. He shook her. “The one you promised to obey always.” “Simon—” “The one you said you’d cleave to, forsaking all others.” “I—” “The one you make love to at night.” “I don’t know if I can live with you anymore.” The words were a whisper, but they rang in his head like a death knell.

Separation by death must finally be choked down, but separation in life is a long anguish, Chiang-nan is a pestilential land; no word from you there in exile. You have been in my dreams, old friend, as if knowing how much I miss you. Caught in a net, how is it you still have wings? I fear you are no longer mortal; the distance to here is enormous. When your spirit came, the maples were green; when it went, the passes were black. The setting moon spills light on the rafters; for a moment I think it's your face. The waters are deep, the waves wide; don't let the river gods take you.

Let’s add up what we know. He gravitated toward all things occult. He wanted to be a member of a tight clan with strict rules and secret codes. He craved highly organized social structures, with leaders and followers clearly distinguished.  A group with little appeal to the masses. A group with few members. We know that these Nordic runes fascinated him. And apparently he held that fascination for a long time, given that he added the ‘Hagalaz’ to the message intended for Marshal Pack.

The continuous work of our life,” says Montaigne, “is to build death.” He quotes the Latin poets: Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora corpsit. And again: Nascentes morimur. Man knows and thinks this tragic ambivalence which the animal and the plant merely undergo. A new paradox is thereby introduced into his destiny. “Rational animal,” “thinking reed,” he escapes from his natural condition without, however, freeing himself from it. He is still a part of this world of which he is a consciousness. He asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things. At every moment he can grasp the non-temporal truth of his existence. But between the past which no longer is and the future which is not yet, this moment when he exists is nothing. This privilege, which he alone possesses, of being a sovereign and unique subject amidst a universe of objects, is what he shares with all his fellow-men. In turn an object for others, he is nothing more than an individual in the collectivity on which he depends.

Zeno gave his lectures on the stoa, the covered walkways or porticos that surrounded the Athenian marketplace. His followers were first called Zenonians and later Stoics. He presided over his school for fifty-eight years and the manner of his death at the age of ninety-eight is bizarre. One day, as he was leaving the school, he tripped and fell, breaking a toe. Lying there in pain, he struck the ground with his fist and quoted a line from the Niobe of Timotheus, “I come of my own accord; why then call me?” He died on the spot through holding his breath.

Descartes' Meditations; doubt rise and results in clear and distinct ideas. all in the mind and all innate. Spinoza bakes the best cake, love God intellectually. Oh! God, he should have stuck to polishing glasses or gotten married. Then dear Philosopher we what mettle your are of. Soren Kierkgaard is the king of leer; life is a disease unto death, he proclaimed till death claimed him early. And Nietzche? following Schopenhauer's Superman- was nursed by his sister despite crying foul of the female race and died a wreck man. All theory no practice. Sartre was better , loyal to Simon De...Both lay next to each other in Paris, witout marrying.

I want this case over so I can feel the warmth of your hugs and kisses again. Sometime before you called, an hour or two maybe, I was fantasizing about kissing you. In this fantasy I haven’t seen you for a while, you come in the door, I hug you…we don’t speak, just look at one another at extremely close range. I look at your face, which in, of, and by itself is a turn-on for me. You have a sexy face, mister, a very sexy face, although I kinda hope other women don’t see it that way. I’m looking at you in this suspended state of excitement. I want the kiss, but I don’t want it to happen too soon. I can hardly breathe. I might pass out when it actually happens.

Every human being has probably had some lucid moments in his life when he has definitely acknowledged to himself that there is no final good here below. But as soon as we have seen this truth we cover it up with lies. Many people even take pleasure in proclaiming it, seeking a morbid joy in their sadness, without ever having been able to bear facing it for a second. Men feel that there is a mortal danger in facing this truth squarely for any length of time. That is true. Such knowledge strikes more surely than a sword; it inflicts a death more frightening than that of the body. After a time it kills everything within us that constitutes our ego. In order to bear it we have to love truth more than life itself.

These women are, quite simply, alive; they know that the source of true values is not in external things but in human hearts. This gives its charm to the world they live in: they banish ennui by the simple fact of their presence, with their dreams, their desires, their pleasures, their emotions, their ingenuities. The sanseverina, that 'active soul' dreads ennui more than death. To stagnate in ennui 'is to keep from dying, she said, not to live'; she is ' always impassioned over something, always in action and gay too '. Thoughtless, childish or profound, gay or grave, daring or secretive, they all reject the heavy sleep in which humanity is mired. And these women who have been able to maintain their liberty- empty as it has been- will rise through passion to heroism once they find an objective worthy of them; their spiritual power, their energy, suggest the fierce purity of total dedication

Shura,” she whispered, “don’t you see? Our baby is a sign from God.” “It is?” “Absolutely,” she said, her face sparkling. Suddenly Alexander understood. “That’s the radiance,” he exclaimed. “That’s why you’re like a flame walking through this hospital. It’s the baby!” “Yes,” she said. “This is what is meant for us. Think about Lazarevo—how many times did we make love in those twenty-nine days?” “I don’t know.” He smiled. “How many? How many zeros follow the twenty-nine?” She laughed quietly. “Two or three. We made love to wake the dead, and yet I didn’t get pregnant. You come to see me for one weekend, and here I am—how do you say, up the stick?” Alexander laughed loudly. “Thank you for that. But, Tania, I want to remind you, we did make love quite a bit that weekend, too.” “Yes.” They stared at each other for a silent, unsmiling moment. Alexander knew. They had both felt too close to death that gray weekend in Leningrad. And, yet, here it was— As if to confirm what he was thinking, Tatiana said, “This is God telling us to go. Can’t you feel that, too? He is saying, this is your destiny! I will not let anything happen to Tatiana, as long as she has Alexander’s baby inside her.” “Oh?” said Alexander, his hands tenderly stroking her stomach. “God is saying that, is He? Why don’t you tell that to the woman in the Ladoga truck with you and Dasha, holding her dead baby all the way from the barracks across to Kobona?” “I feel stronger now than ever,” Tatiana said, hugging him. “Where is your famous faith, big man?

Marathon In 490 B.C., a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles, from Marathon to Athens, to bring the senate news of a battle. He died from exhaustion, but his memory lives on thanks to the “marathon,” a twenty-six-mile footrace named in his honor. I thought it would be neat to bring Pheidippides to a modern-day marathon and talk to him about his awesome legacy.   ME: So, Pheidippides: What was it like to run the first “marathon”? PHEIDIPPIDES: It was the worst experience of my life. ME: How did it come about? PHEIDIPPIDES: My general gave the order. I begged him, “Please, don’t make me do this.” But he hardened his heart and told me, “You must.” And so I ran the distance, and it caused my death. ME: How did you feel when you finally reached your destination? PHEIDIPPIDES: I was already on the brink of death when I entered the senate hall. I could actually feel my life slipping away. So I recited my simple message, and then, with my final breath, I prayed to the gods that no human being, be he Greek or Persian, would ever again have to experience so horrible an ordeal. ME: Hey, here come the runners! Wooooh! PHEIDIPPIDES: Who are these people? Where are they going? ME: From one end of New York to the other. It’s a twenty-six-mile distance. Sound familiar? PHEIDIPPIDES: What message do they carry…and to whom? ME: Oh, they’re not messengers. PHEIDIPPIDES: But then…who has forced them to do this? ME: No one. It’s like, you know, a way of testing yourself. PHEIDIPPIDES: But surely, a general or king has said to them, “You must do this. Do this or you will be killed.” ME: No, they just signed up. Hey, look at that old guy with the beard! Pretty inspiring, huh? Still shuffling around after all these years. PHEIDIPPIDES: We must rescue that man. We must save his life. ME: Oh, he knows what he’s doing. He probably runs this thing every year. PHEIDIPPIDES: Is he…under a curse? ME: No.