That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.
Dorianne LauxRead
Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the nature of death and its perception, presenting it as a peaceful and even joyful experience rather than a fearful one.
In this quote, Dorianne Laux personifies death as a gentle girl, suggesting that death is not something to dread but rather an integral part of life's cycle. The imagery of cotton slips, laughter, and the beauty of nature evokes a serene and comforting view of death, contrasting the common belief that it is solely associated with darkness and despair. Instead, it presents death as an experience filled with life, beauty, and even joy, as the character listens to the lively essence of the living world.
Themes
DeathLifePerceptionJoyPhilosophyNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a eulogy to celebrate the beauty of life and the nature of death.
More from Dorianne Laux
All quotes →Moon In the Window I wish I could say I was the kind of child who watched the moon from her window, would turn toward it and wonder. I never wondered. I read. Dark signs that crawled toward the edge of the page. It took me years to grow a heart from paper and glue. All I had was a flashlight, bright as the moon, a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
Dorianne LauxRead
How not to imagine the tumors ripening beneath his skin, flesh I have kissed, stroked with my fingertips, pressed my belly and breasts against, some nights so hard I thought I could enter him, open his back at the spine like a door or a curtain and slip in like a small fish between his ribs, nudge the coral of his brains with my lips, brushing over the blue coil of his bowels with the fluted silk of my tail.
Dorianne LauxRead
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