"Because there was only one thing worse than dying. And that was knowing you were going to die. And where. And how. (“Death Ship”)
Now when I die, I shall only be dead.
More Richard Matheson quotes
"There seemed no answer. He wasn't resigned to anything, he hadn't accepted or adjusted to the life he'd been forced into. Yet here he was, eight month...
"Again he shook his head. The world's gone mad, he thought. The dead walk about and I think nothing of it. The return of corpses has become trivial in ...
"It was a high ceilinged room with tall, large-panes windows. Apart from the doorway was the desk where book had been checked out in days when books we...
"Shall I kill her now? Shall I not even investigate, but kill her and burn her?His throat moved. Such thoughts were a hideous testimony to the world he...
"He thought about that visionary lady. To die, he thought, never knowing the fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved one's embrace. To sink into th...
"In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not onl...
"Failures plagued me. Things I had omitted or ignored, neglected. What I should have given and hadn’t. I felt the biting pang of every unfulfillment.
"Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience...
"…Not that it was unjust; not that the scales were forced out of balance. Where there had been good, it showed as clearly. Kindnesses, accomplishments,...
"If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following mor...
"Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well—as though they’d been fulfilled. I saw that what ...