The wreckage of stars – I built a world from this wreckage. Friedrich Nietzsche, Dithyrambs of Dionysus
To us the night sky is a fascinating spectacle. To our ancestors it was the key to their survival. It was this relationship with the heavens that led to some of mankind’s greatest discoveries and creations. Extreme Universe s1e6: Star Gates, National Geographic 2010
There are old red giants so puffed up they are coming apart at the seams. Supernovae – the most spectacular firework displays in the universe. Mysterious black holes. Seven Ages of Starlight, BBC 2012
Over millions of years the proto-star grows, increasing the pressure and heat in its core. ibid.
The most massive stars are able to fuse heavier and heavier elements in a series of layers. ibid.
As the nebulae create stars, they make the building blocks of living things on Earth. ibid.
Just one type of star will remain ... Red Dwarfs. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe: Destiny 1/4 BBC 2011
When a star runs out of hydrogen it begins to die. But it doesn’t go quietly. Rather than cooling, the star becomes much hotter until there is a sudden flash, then the star starts to expand ... As it cools it takes on the characteristics of a dying star. It became a Red Giant. Brian Cox, Wonders of the Universe: Stardust 2/4 BBC 2011
The core will start to collapse very rapidly leaving a shell, leaving hydrogen and helium behind ... The creation process of Carbon and Oxygen is over in the blink of an eye. ibid.
The entire star falls in on itself. This is the destiny that awaits most of the stars in the universe. ibid.
Twenty-six elements: what of the remaining elements, some of which are vital to life? ibid.
Red Dwarfs are by far the most numerous stars in our galaxy. Brian Cox, Human Universe III: Are We Alone? BBC 2014
Supernovae, gamma ray bursts, solar flares – stars are the ticking time-bombs of the universe. Phil Plait’s Bad Universe: Death Stars, 2010
A supernova is one of the most spectacular events in the universe. ibid.
When a star has thirty, fifty, a hundred times the mass of the sun ... It’s not just a supernova, it’s a hypernova. ibid.
A gamma ray burst from a hypernova explodes with such power that the beams are dangerous for a much greater distance. ibid.
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
There is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars. John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly, to be fearful of the night. Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time. W H Auden, The More Loving One
‘Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?’
‘Yes.’
‘All like ours?’
‘I don’t know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound – a few blighted.’
‘Which do we live on – a splendid one or a blighted one?’
‘A blighted one.’ Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles
The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another but they are so distant so very far apart that they cannot feel the warmth of each other even though they are made of burning. Beth Revis, Across the Universe
There is no easy way from the earth to the stars. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Even as a child, she had preferred night to day, had enjoyed sitting out in the yard after sunset, under the star-speckled sky listening to frogs and crickets. Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colours. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities. Dean Koontz, Midnight
Love is only one fine star away. Stevie Nicks
Art is everywhere you look for it; hail the twinkling stars for they are God’s careless splatters. El Greco
When darkness is at its darkest, a star shines the brightest. Louise Philippe
I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia. Ptolemy
The love that moves the sun and the other stars. Dante Alighieri
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole –
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things. Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems
Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt. A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space. Lord Byron
It is early, early morning. It’s that time when it’s still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying. Markus Zusak, Underdog
How will the ships navigate
without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were
dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted,
was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate,
unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did. Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, were as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who’s lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Powerful winds that crack the boughs of November! – and the bright calm sun, untouched by the furies of the earth, abandoning the earth to darkness, and wild forlornness, and night, as men shiver in their coats and hurry home. And then the lights of home glowing in those desolate deeps. There are the stars, though! – high and sparkling in a spiritual firmament. We will walk in the windsweeps, gloating in the envelopment of ourselves, seeking the sudden grinning intelligence of humanity below these abysmal beauties. Now the roaring midnight fury and the creaking of our hinges and windows, now the winder, now the understanding of the earth and our being on it: this drama of enigmas and double-depths and sorrows and grave joys, these human things in the elemental vastness of the windblown world. Jack Kerouac, Windblown World
As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams. W B Yeats, Rosa Alchemica