My Grandfather Died Quotes & Sayings

My grandfather started his autobiography before he died; he never finished it. I would like to finish his autobiography because I finished mine. — Karrine Steffans

I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of stomach cancer. I decided that nobody should suffer that much. — Gertrude B. Elion

My grandfather killed my father in my mind. I know he died of cancer-but it was because of what my grandfather did to him. — Henry Ford

When my grandfather died, I started adopting some of his accents, to sort of remind myself of him. A homage. He was a war hero, and he was really great with his hands. — Gavin DeGraw

I had an emerald ring that my mother gave me four or five years before she died. She wore it always, I wore it always, and I have given it to my daughter, and she wears it always. This ring belonged originally to my great, great grandfather. It's well over 150 years old. — Jennifer Johnston

My nana was always a widow as long as I was alive; my grandfather died before I was born. All the women on my street - there were four houses in a row with all old women who lived alone who were widowed. They all had kids, but they were all widowed. My mom didn't put me in preschool; I didn't know that was a thing. I just hung out with these women all day. — Jen Kirkman

I was named after my Jewish grandfather who left Poland early in the 20th century. What I knew from an early age was that he had lived most of his life in England, his Jewish wife had died, and he married a non-Jewish woman who was my grandmother. — Morris Gleitzman

My dad died, and my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died. And the guy before him, I don't know. Probably died. — Norm MacDonald

When I was 15, I begged my grandfather to give me this guitar he'd always had in the back of his closet. I promised him I'd learn to play it, but I never did. Then my grandfather died, and I felt so guilty. So I started playing. — Valerie June

On the night that I was born, my paternal grandfather, Josef Tock, made ten predictions that shaped my life. Then he died in the very minute that my mother gave birth to me. — Dean Koontz

I wasn't going to get such a nice car - I was going to get a cute little hybrid or something, keep the trees happy - but then my grandfather died, and it was all: retail therapy! — Chris Colfer

My grandfather and my uncle both died from colorectal cancer, my dad almost died from it and I have the gene for it. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The sole literary presence from my childhood was my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, who eccentrically copied poems into the backs of his books. After he died, when I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave his books away, and his poems were lost. — Edward Hirsch

My grandfather was a healer, and he used matches often. Once, he burnt a wart off my finger and then rubbed the ash deep into it, and it never did come back. When he worked at a factory, people would line up next to his truck to be healed. He died before he could teach us any of his secrets. — Shea Hembrey

It's because of my grandfather that I became a Young Avenger. But it's hard sometimes, to be a black kid carrying a name like "Patriot". I remember talking to Captain America about before he died, and he explained what Patriotism meant to him...
It wasn't about blindly supporting your government. It was about knowing what your country could be, what it should be... And trying to lead it there through your example. And holding it accountable when it failed. I remember he said: "There's noting patriotic about corruption or cover-ups... or defending them. But exposing them, well, that takes a hero. — Ed Brubaker

I told them that my grandfather had died in the Great Crash of 1929 - a stockbroker jumped out of a window and crushed him and his pushcart down below. — Mario Cuomo

I used to be terrified of death. My grandfather was terminal in the hospital across from my high school, yet I never visited him. That fact still haunts me to this day. Years later, my arms were around my grandmother as she struggled with her last breaths. I told her we were with her and everything was going to be okay. She died as I held her tightly and I felt her body lose life. It was the most peaceful moment I ever experienced, and I felt joy for her. It was an emotional, intellectual, and spiritual moment for me. I wasn't afraid anymore ... One day years later I received the phone call every parent dreads. My daughter was in a serious automobile accident. As I raced to her I prepared myself for the news she had died. Once again, I felt an unexpected and profound emotion. She lived, but in the face of that horrifying time there was a strange overall calm. I realized, no matter what, everything was going to be okay. I remembered I wasn't afraid anymore. — John K. Brown

Just because someone's dead doesn't mean it's over. My grandfather died more than 25 years ago, but I still think of him a lot and smell his smell. — Julian Clary

She waited until she and my grandfather Anthel were just home from their honeymoon, and then sat him down and told him this: "Honey, I know you like to take a drink, and that's all right, but be forewarned that I ain't your maid and I ain't your punching bag, and if you ever raise your hand to me you'd best kill me. Because otherwise I'll wait until you're asleep; sew you into the bed; and beat you to death with a frying pan." Until he died, I am told, my grandfather was a gentle man. — Haven Kimmel

My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn't take very good care of himself. — Clint Eastwood

Nobody told me about him [my grandfather], and he died when I was six, and yet within the last year or two, that strange Indian summer of remembrance that comes to us in the leisured times when the children have been born and we have time to think, has made me know him perfectly well. It is rather an uncomfortable thought for the grown-up, and especially for the parent, but of a salutary and restraining nature, that though children may not understand what is said and done before them, and have no interest in it at the time, and though they may forget it at once and for years, yet these things that they have seen and heard and not noticed have after all impressed themselves for ever on their minds, and when they are men and women come crowing back with surprising and often painful distinctness, and away frisk all the cherished little illusions in flocks. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Most of the trees are already dying. All across North America from Mexico to Alaska, forests are dying. Seventy thousand square miles of forest - that's as much land as all of the state of Washington - that much forest has died since I was born. What if I am growing up in a world that will not have trees anymore by the time I am my grandfather's age? — Ned Hayes

My grandfather died when I was 12, but I remember the sorrow of my mother. Even now, she's an old lady, but when she speaks about her father, she looks young. A love like that is undefeated, you know? — Claire Denis

My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books. — Umberto Eco

I met my grandfather just before he died, and it was the first time that I had seen Dad with a relative of his. It was interesting to see my own father as a son and the body language and alteration in attitude that comes with that, and it sort of changed our relationship for the better. — Christian Bale

I'll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do was eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, 'Those hands dug freedom for me.' — Rick Santorum

I didn't know my grandparents. They were - my grandfather - my maternal grandfather died when I was five. I have very little memory of him. All my other grandparents were dead by the time I was of any age to remember anything. — Robert Barry

My great-great-grandfather lived to age 28, my immigrant great-grandfather Pedro Gotiaoco died at 66, my grandfather was 68, and my father died at 34. — John Gokongwei

The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died. — Anne Sexton

The wedding ring on my left hand was bought by my grandfather, Samuel Miliband, in Brussels in 1920. I never knew him, as he died when I was one. But his ring was kept by my aunt until it was placed on my finger by my wife Louise 32 years later. — David Miliband

My grandfather for example only died twice, once during the war and once in the 1980s. — James Nicoll

I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn't visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

My grandfather, Harry, died when my dad was in his early 20s, so I never met him. Amazingly, he was 6ft tall. That gene definitely never filtered down to me! — Jamie Cullum

My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer. — Hill Harper

Either my adorably sadistic grandfather has done something terrible to you, or you're about to inform me that I've died by - rather stupidly, if I say so myself - falling off a mountain," he said. "Those seem to be the only two reactions I get these days. — Alexandra Bracken

Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters. — Jamie Wyeth

My grandfather had died, and my mother was trying to explain it to me ... Grandpa isn't coming back? No, she said. Not ever again ... And I remember saying, hold everything right fucking there. You went to all the trouble of conceiving me, and giving birth to me, and raising me and clothing me and all ... and you make me cry and things hurt so much and disappointments crush my heart every day and I can't do half the things I want to and sometimes I just want to scream
and what I've got to look forward to is my body breaking and something flipping off the switch in my head
I go through all this, and then there's death? What is the motherfucking deal here? I wasn't having this. This was not fair. — Warren Ellis

What, the Great War? in which your great-grandfather, who happened to be my grandfather, was gassed in the trenches not once, but twice? Which meant he and your great-grandmother were very poor, because he was too ill to work and died young? And meant I inherited his weak lungs? Not relevant to us? her mother says. And then the break-up of the Balkans, and the start of the territorial trouble in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the civil unrest in Ireland, and the shifts of power in Russia, and the power shifts in the Ottoman empire, and the bankruptcy, economic catastrophe and social unrest in Germany, all of which played a huge part in the rise of Fascism and in the bringing about of another war in which, as it happens, your own grandmother and grandfather
who happened to be my mother and father
both fought when they were just two or three years older than you? Not relevant? To us? — Ali Smith

I never saw my grandfather because he had died before I was born, but I have good memories of my grandmother and of how she could play the piano at the old house. — John Forbes Nash Jr.

My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning. — Judith Butler

After my grandfather died I went down to the basement of my family house where my family kept books, anthologies and things and there was an anthology without any names attached to it and I read a poem called Spellbound and I somehow attached it to my grandfather's death and I thought my grandfather had written it. — Edward Hirsch

I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. — Ray Bradbury

I'm mortal. I could die any day." Brandon had almost killed her. Her parents had died young. Her grandfather would have died yesterday. "I'm Warrick Voclain. And you will stay by my side until the stars fall from the sky. — Erin Kellison

I never knew my grandfather. He died the year before I was born. But as a child, he did, of course, those wonderful illustrations, 'Treasure Island,' and whatnot. — Jamie Wyeth

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car. — Will Rogers

The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, can escape that terrible knowledge. Our freedom is not entirely our own; in some sense it is mortgaged from those who paid the ultimate price for its continuance. My own life of security, freedom, opportunity, and relative affluence certainly has been made possible because a grandfather fought and was gassed in the Argonne; an uncle in the Marines died trying to stop Japanese imperialism on Okinawa; a cousin in the Army lost his life at twenty-two trying to stop Hitler in France; and my father in the Army Air Force flew forty times over Japan hoping to end the idea of the expansive Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. I have spent some time these past decades trying to learn where, how, and why they and their generations fought as they did - and what our own obligations are to acknowledge their sacrifices. — Victor Davis Hanson