Obituary Quotes - Page 2

• I'm fairly certain when I die that the obituary will say, 'Author of 'Angels in America' dies.' Unless I'm completely forgotten, and then it won't say anything at all.

  Tony Kushner

  Angel, America, Say Anything

  4 Copy quote

• A few years ago I wrote two versions of my obituary, the one I wanted and the one I was heading for. They were very different. I realized I needed to make some big changes if I was going to look back and be proud of my life. I am making those changes, and now I have a life worth living.

  Roz Savage

  Two, Years, Proud

  5 Copy quote

• Oh definitely. It'll be in a hot tub, with my entire head squeezed into a jet. The photos are going to be hilarious. Man, I really hope the internet sticks around so people can reference this article in my obituaries and see that what sounds like a joke was actually amazingly prescient.

  Jason Sudeikis

  Men, People, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• There's a magical part of it (writing obituaries), too, which is you're trying to breathe life back into someone who has just died. You're trying to conjure them up.

  Marilyn Johnson

  Death, Writing, Trying

  5 Copy quote

• It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Humorous, Hunting, Ideas

  "Ring for Jeeves". Book by P. G. Wodehouse, 1953.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• About one month before he was killed, when asked by David Frost how his obituary should read: Something about the fact that I made some contribution to either my country, or those who were less well off. I think back to what Camus wrote about the fact that perhaps this world is a world in which children suffer, but we can lessen the number of suffering children, and if you do not do this, then who will do this? I'd like to feel that I'd done something to lessen that suffering.

  Robert Kennedy

  Country, Children, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Some people want to amass a great amount of wealth and make a great looking obituary. I'm going to die with more money than is good to leave my son.

  Darrell Issa

  Son, People, Want

  4 Copy quote

• It's not the loss of life that makes the death bitter -- it's the obituaries.

  Evan Esar

  Loss, Bitter

  6 Copy quote

• It's sad that grandkids show up at the end of obituaries, way behind the list of work place achievements, social clubs and survivors. Why last? If you've got grandkids, you know they're first when it comes to the joy in your life.

  Regina Brett

  Achievement, Joy, Survivor

  10 Copy quote

• Do not give alms promiscuously. Select the unworthy poor and make them happy. To give to the deserving is a duty, but to help the improvident, drinking class is clear generosity, so that the donor has a right to be warmed by a selfish pride and count on a most flattering obituary.

  George Ade

  Selfish, Drinking, Pride

  George Ade (1960). “The America of George Ade, 1866-1944: Fables, Short Stories, Essays”, New York, Putnam [1960]

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A common defense among obituary-fanciers such as myself is that the obit is not about death at all. It is about life. This is true since an article about the condition of deadness would make for turgid reading at best.

  Tom Rachman

  Reading, Defense, Common

  5 Copy quote

• Al-Qaeda's obituary has been written countless times over the decade. Each iteration has proved to be ephemeral, as the moment has continually shown itself to have a deeper bench than we imagine.

  Bruce Hoffman

  Benches, Ephemeral, Als

  4 Copy quote

• Metaphysics keeps surviving its obituaries.

  Mason Cooley

  Metaphysics, Surviving

  5 Copy quote

• We're all killers at heart . . . . I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.

  Clarence Darrow

  Taken, Heart, Killers

  Testimony before congressional committee, 1 Feb. 1926

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Desire, Wish

  "The Story of My Life". Book by Clarence Darrow, 1932.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers. But when she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature. They said she was "timid and shy" but had "the courage of a lion." They were full of phrases like "radical humility" and "quiet fortitude.

  Susan Cain

  Sweet, Humility, Two

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.2, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters

  James Frey

  What Matters, Mind, Done

  James Frey (2003). “A Million Little Pieces”, p.87, Rutgers University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice.

  Barbara Kruger

  Art, Voice, Village

  4 Copy quote

• Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.

  James Joyce

  Wind, Giving, Lease

  James Joyce (2015). “Ulysses”, p.114, James Joyce

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• This won't look so good in my obituary," Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words."Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria.

  Alistair Maclean

  Country, Looks, Said

  4 Copy quote

• When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.

  Don DeLillo

  Death, Thinking, Years

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.115, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper.

  Billy Sunday

  Tombstone, Finals, Behind You

  Billy Sunday, William Thomas Ellis (1917). “Billy Sunday, the Man and His Message: With His Own Words which Have Won Thousands for Christ”

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.

  Bill Cosby

  Birthday, Funny Life, Mistake

  Bill Cosby (1987). “Time Flies”

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?

  Christopher Hitchens

  Children, Real, Writing

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.14, Atlantic Books Ltd

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death. . . . . . (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Spring, Men, Inevitability Of Death

  6 Copy quote