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Tragedy Quotes


"Three hundred and thirty-two kids between the age of one month and fourteen years had been confined within the FAYZ.One hundred and ninety-six eventually emerged.One hundred and thirty-six lay dead.Dead and buried in the town plaza.Dead and floating in the lake or on its shores.Dead in the desert.In the fields.Dead of battles old and recent. Of starvation and accident, suicide and murder.It was a fatality rate of just over 40 percent."


"She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, a tiny, bloody angel in the snow, and they were going to destroy her."


"Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories - cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful."


"And then, on September 11, the world fractured.It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day and the days that would follow--the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction."


"What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it."


"Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss."


"I have seen people starting the fire with water, turning every breeze into a storm, create chaos out of peace. Few people are meant to destroy everything and themselves no matter what, and if you hold on to them long they will take you into their abyss and tear you into pieces."


"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June" . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"


"Walk the midway and hear the carnival barker.Come see the freak named after his deceased father.Come see the prince who wants to abdicate his throne.Come see the son whose name is carved on a gravestone."


"There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient's chest hears not, through he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to discern the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers, fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge?"


"Malphas surveyed the women's bodies with utter disgust and sorrowuntil he realized Tabitha was still alive. He knelt by her side and cradled her head tenderly. "Tabby... I'm so sorry"Grimacing she opened her eyes as she labored to breathe. She laughed bitterly, exposing a set of bleeding teeth. "there are some things that sorry doesn't fix, Caleb.""Shhh, don't speak. I can--""you failed us," She went limp in his arms. Her eyes went Dull.Wincing, Caleb held her close to his heart and stroked her bloody hair. "No, Tabby. I failed myself.""Most of all, I failed Nick."


"They burnt down the whole palace and they laughed menacingly. The shadows of the dreams and memories they burnt alive walked all over the ruins, trying to hold on to the charred pieces of their body."


"How one tragedy affects so many others."


"Rage and revenge sat in his heart fanned by time and silence. Before he could realise anything, he was engulfed in flames. Everything he touched, lost its existence in his life. Turning him into a monster, who destroys everything in a daylight but cries in dark and silence."



"Every time you go to see Hamlet you don't expect it to have a happy ending...you're still enthralled. (Interview BBC Radio 4 Today 17 October 2012.)"


"But was the woman's death the tragedy, or her life?"


"We came together in a dance of death and so quickly was I sucked down into the vortex that when I came to the surface again I couldn't recognize the world. When I found myself loose the music had ceased the carnival was over and I had been picked clean."
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