Obit Quotes & Sayings

Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise. — Han Suyin

Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice. — Wendell Berry

When [Claudette Colbert] died at 92, on July 30, 1996, her front-page New York Times obit recalled her "wit, gaiety, cupid'sbow mouth and light touch ... worldly and sophisticated yet down to earth." Claudette herself was quoted, "I've always believed that acting is instinct to start with; you either have it or you don't ... I did comedy because all my life I always wanted to laugh myself. There was never anything that gave me as much satisfaction as to be in something amusing. — Eve Golden

What postmodernism gives us instead is a multicultural defense for male violence - a defense for it wherever it is, which in effect is a pretty universal defense. — Catharine MacKinnon

I needed to see you. He repeats himself.
I smile. I like that word, need. It's not want. He had no choice because it was a need to see me. I like that. — Tara Brown

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

I became interested in librarians while researching my first book, about obituaries. With the exception of a few showy eccentrics, like the former soldier in Hitler's army who had a sex change and took up professional whistling, the most engaging obit subjects were librarians. An obituary of a librarian could be about anything under the sun, a woman with a phenomenal memory, who recalled the books her aging patrons read as children - and was also, incidentally, the best sailor on her stretch of the Maine coast - or a man obsessed with maps, who helped automate the Library of Congress's map catalog and paved the way for wonders like Google Maps. — Marilyn Johnson

We're still not going to talk about it, but just think for a minute, will you? Dragon?" She curled her hands into claws. "Rowr? Me leaving town? — Thea Harrison

I have been elevated to such a high status that the fall will be very steep. — Hrithik Roshan

For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, 'Academy Award winner so-and-so.' — Robert Osborne

"My obit is going to be full of Bogart, I'm sure," she says, adding, "I'll never know if that's true. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is." — Lauren Bacall

It was no amalgam of colors comparable to anything in mortal existence. It was as if all natural colors had been mutated into a painfully lush iridescence by some prism fantastically corrupted in its form; it was a rainbow staining the sky after a poison deluge; it was an aurora painting the darkness with a blaze of insanity, a blaze that did not burn vigorously but shimmered with an insect-jeweled frailness. — Thomas Ligotti

Everyone wrote our obituary but us and the coaches and the kids who stayed with us. The obit was, 'Vanderbilt will have to leave the Southeastern Conference. All the coaches are leaving, and all the students are transferring.' — Gordon Gee

A prince may be seen happy today and ruined tomorrow without having shown any chance in his character. For the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes ... — Neil Jordan

Not only we can, but some have reached perfection; so no matter what finer bodies come, they could only be on the relative plane and could do no more than we, for to attain freedom is all that can be done. — Swami Vivekananda

The Devil needs a very good lawyer to prove that it is not the Satan but the people themselves who have committed so many evils! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

That morning I realized I would probably spend the rest of my professional life trying to unravel the mysteries of trauma. How do horrific experiences cause people to become hopelessly stuck in the past? What happens in people's minds and brains that keeps them frozen, trapped in a place they desperately wish to escape? Why — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Don't feel sorry for me, now. It was for science, and as long as something is for science, it's worth doing. It's just not necessarily worth repeating. — Mira Grant

The dead die hard, trespassers on the beyond, they must take the place as they find it, the shafts and manholes back into the muck, till such time as the lord of the manor incurs through his long acquiescence a duty of care in respect of them. They are free among the dead by all means, then their troubles are over, their natural troubles. But the debt of nature, that scandalous post-obit on one's own estate, can no more be discharged by kicking the bucket than descent can be made into the same stream twice. This is a true saying. — Samuel Beckett

If I get an obit in the Times, they will say, of course, known to millions as Rumpole. — Leo McKern

I know if I were to drop dead now, people would probably write nice things in the obit. — Martin Short

The obituaries shot up to the top of my list when I discovered Robert McG. Thomas, the 'Times' obit writer who redesigned its traditional form and added a measure of stylistic elegance. — Billy Collins

There's war - there's always been war, as long as most of us have been alive. There have always been people being abused, there's always been horrible things in the world. Why are we outraged? We should just be quiet and figure it out, and work it out together. — Dave Matthews

All that a Pulitzer really does is give the obit writers something to put between the commas after your name. — Eddie Adams

I really connected with martial arts. I'd always had a fantasy as a kid of being a ninja warrior, so it definitely answered that sort of need in my psyche, too - a need to be superpowerful. — Milla Jovovich

You say you hate me, yet, you use me to stop hurting. — Brodi Ashton