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You should not desire, he knows, the death of any human creature. Death is your prince, you are not his patron; when you think he is engaged elsewhere, he will batter down your door, walk in and wipe his boots on you.

— Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies (2012)

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Death

More quotes by Hilary Mantel

He will remember his first sight of the open sea: a gray wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream.

Wolf Hall (2009)

It is a sure sign of troubled minds, the habit of quotation.

Wolf Hall (2009)

A lie is no less a lie because it is a thousand years old.

Wolf Hall (2009)

Lent saps the spirits, as of course it is designed to do.

Wolf Hall (2009)

Gambling is not a vice, if you can afford to do it.

Wolf Hall (2009)

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

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The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die.

Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

The thunderstorm is a constant phenomenon, raging alternately over some part of the world or the other. Can a single man or creature escape death if all that charge of lightning strikes the earth?

Kalki Krishnamurthy Sivakozhundu of Tiruvazhundur (1939)

So what if a kid dies? God will take care of him.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hilary Mantel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.