quotations about suicide
Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living
Suicide is a form of murder -- premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
SUSANNA KAYSEN
Girl, Interrupted
Suicide is an escape from life. What is life? An escape from death. This means that each of us must die twice. There is the death waiting for us ahead, and the death that comes pursuing from behind.... Once you are free at least from the death that comes pursuing you, you can relax and enjoy life as you go along.
KOBO ABE
The Green Stockings
Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.
WALKER PERCY
Lost in the Cosmos
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain ...
JOHN KEATS
"Ode to a Nightingale"
Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.
JOSEPH CONRAD
The Secret Sharer and Other Stories
When I am dead,
and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho you should lean above
me broken hearted,
I shall not care.
SARA TEASDALE
"I Shall Not Care", Rivers to the Sea
Many argue that suicide is a senseless act but in truth it requires a great deal of consideration and psychological factors before a person is drawn to taking their own life. Understanding this is key to getting people the help that they need.
ZAC THOMPSON
"What Leads to Suicide?", Huffington Post, June 26, 2017
He wondered how anybody could possibly choose to die; such a strange choice to make, the prey failing its obligation to evade the hounds for as long as possible.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
JULIE BURCHILL
Girls on Film
It is extremely rare for young men, when driven to suicide, to attempt it a second time if the first fails. When it doesn't cure life, it cures all desire for voluntary death.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
A Daughter of Eve
We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
The Virgin Suicides
However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance--so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Comedians
It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born