Quotes & Sayings About Obituaries

Every morning I read the obituaries. If it ain't there I make myself a cup of tea and carry on like I have the past century or so. — Lois Greiman

Chronology of any event worked best in obituaries. It had no place in the world of sentiment, where memories, ideas and assumptions co-existed side by side. — Noorilhuda

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

I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order. — Erma Bombeck

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

My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms — T. S. Eliot

My father always read obituaries to me out loud, not because he was maudlin or morbid, but because they were mini biographies. — Bill Paxton

It's not the loss of life that makes the death bitter
it's the obituaries. — Evan Esar

It's like obituaries, when you die they finally give you good reviews. — Roger Maris

Obituaries are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives. I defy you to find a single obituary that begins, "Jane Doe won the Nobel Prize in large part because she was admitted to a prestigious, highly selective preschool. After that, everything just kind of fell into place." Instead, you will read about dead ends, lucky coincidences, quirky habits, excessive self-confidence (often interspersed with bursts of excessive self-doubt), and a lot of passion for something. — Charles Wheelan

Good priests never look for awards and, perversely enough in the clerical culture universe, do not receive many. Like the aged nuns who taught selflessly and nearly anonymously all their lives, these servants of the People of God only get into the papers when their obituaries are printed. — Eugene Kennedy

I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. — Mark Twain

If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently. — David Levithan

Here's what I know: I eat mass quantities of red meat, curse religiously, sing out of tune but with conviction. I cry when it suits me, laugh when it's inopportune, read The New York Times obituaries and wedding announcements, out loud and in that order. — Julie Buxbaum

I don't listen to the news. I don't read the newspaper unless it's eccentric information - and the obituaries, of course. — Maira Kalman

The most cursory examination of even the most progressive organs of information reveals a curious inability to recognize women as newsmakers, unless they are young or married to a head of state or naked or pregnant by some triumph of technology or perpetrators or victims of some hideous crime or any combiniation of the above. Women's issues are often disguised as people issues, unless they are relegated to the women's pages which amazingly still suvive. Senior figures are all male; even the few women who are deemed worthy of obituaries are shown in images from their youth, as if the last fourty years of their lives have been without achievement of any kind. If you analyse the by-lines in your morning paper, you will see that the senior editorial staff are all older men, supported by a rabble of junior females, the infinitely replacesable 'hackettes'. — Germaine Greer

He left for his day at the library. Today is research day. When he got there, he went directly to the microfiche machine and began looking through the newspaper obituaries for married men who died between 1980 and 1983. Their widows would be due for a little romance by now. He stayed there for hours, searching for her. His meticulous search netted seven names that merited further investigation. If some husband died and it made the first five pages of the paper, well, that meant a definite bonus because the dead man was powerful and with power came money. Their widows made excellent prospects for his future plans. — Jean Holloway

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

Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out ofthe window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians ... There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers. — Seumas Milne

I've done a lot of death cartoons - tombstones, Grim Reaper, illness, obituaries ... I'm not great at analyzing things, but my guess is that maybe the only relief from the terror of being alive is jokes. — Roz Chast

Although champagne was served, the mood was curiously subdued. After this reunion, they would probably never meet together as a class again - at least not in such numbers. They would spend the next decades reading obituaries of the men who had started out in 1954 as rivals and today were leaving Harvard as brothers. This was the beginning of the end. They had met once more and just had time enough to learn that they liked one another. And to say goodbye. — Erich Segal

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

A popular Harvard business professor urged his students to read the obituaries in the New York Times before they read anything else, in order to learn from the lives of great men. — Georges F. Doriot

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

I read obituaries first thing in the morning. With a cup of coffee. This is NOT MORBID. Just epic. Maybe it's a way of trying to figure out, before the day begins, what is important. And I am curious about all the little things that make up life. Little? — Maira Kalman

Yeah, I can imagine with the funeral and all, this is the last thing you want to be dealing with right now. Like I said, my condolences." Mayhew took his own deep breath, his far more raspy. "We've got a nutshell, but we're still filling in some blanks. You're not the first person in the county to have this kind of thing happen. We suspect it's a gang of young males who read the obituaries, find out when the funerals are, then Google Earth the house and figure out whether it's worth robbing. — Karin Slaughter

Isn't that technology's job? To lighten our burden? To broaden our horizons? To make it possible to talk to your attorney and listen to a Styx album and check the obituaries in the town where your parents continue to live and videotape a race riot and send a text message and stun someone into submission all at the same time? — David Sedaris

Some people do not even want to look at a person when the person is alive, but when the person dies they write eloquent obituaries and make offerings of flowers. At that point the person has died and cannot really enjoy the fragrance of the flowers anymore. If we really understood and remembered that life was impermanent, we would do everything we could to make the other person happy right here and right now. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A lasting marriage, they say, is one where the two reach for different sections of the Sunday paper. Me, I go right for the obituaries, just like those very elderly characters in Muriel Spark's spooky novel, 'Memento Mori.' — Billy Collins

I turn to the 'Telegraph's' obituaries page with trepidation. — Christopher Lee

In general, writers never find out how strong their talent is: that investigation begins with their obituaries. In the USSR, writers found out how good they were when they were still alive. If the talent was strong, only luck or silence could save them. — Martin Amis

I personally believe breathatarianism to be the highest mode of human living [ ... ] breathing in pure air, absorbing the direct light and energies of the sun, bathing in pure water [ ... ] I look at the obituaries every morning and ain't nobody listed but you eaters. — Dick Gregory

When I wake up in the morning, I immediately check the morning paper. If my name is not in the obituaries, I get up — Benjamin Franklin

You, who thought that violence for the purpose of advancing the ummah was Allah's way, allowed this to happen. You became a matchless theologian, to defend torture and rape. You became a master architect who built prisons, a brilliant doctor who administered lethal injections, a great writer who penned obituaries. You used your mind as a monument to a great evil." "Yes, all that I have done," Aliuf responded. — Joel D. Hirst

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

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. — Clarence Darrow

IT IS SENSIBLE of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away. Every day millions of people pass away - in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation, e-mails to the corpse's friends - but people don't die. Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath, join their dear ones in heaven, meet their Maker, ascend to a better place, succumb surrounded by family, return to the Lord, go home, cross over, or leave this world. Whatever the fatuous phrase, death usually happens peacefully (asleep) or after a courageous struggle (cancer). Sometimes women lose their husbands. (Where the hell did I put him?) Some expressions are less common in print: push up the daisies, kick the bucket, croak, buy the farm, cash out. All euphemisms conceal how we gasp and choke turning blue. — Donald Hall

Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards. — Austin Kleon

I read obituaries every day to learn what sorts of lives are available to us, to see an entire life compressed into a few column inches, to fit the whole story in my eye at once. — Sarah Manguso

When I saw the photograph I realized for the first time why the obituaries had so disturbed me.
I had allowed other people to think he was dead.
I had allowed him to be buried alive. — Joan Didion

Producing obituaries is a way of creating a legacy to remember important people of our times and their contributions. No matter whose obituary it is, I look for something inspirational about each person. — Laurie Nadel

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

I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day. — Robert A. Heinlein

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

He was obsessed with obituaries. She'd never read them before, he couldn't believe it, to him it was like someone who'd never read the funnies...Michael always wanted to know what they died of- accidental gunshot wounds, overdose, cancer. 'Was it suicide?' That's what he really wanted to know. — Janet Fitch

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

Obituaries were among my favorite to write because they have elements no other news stories have - a story from start to finish with a proper conclusion. — Tom Rachman

I think all the obituaries for newspapers we're hearing are premature. Many papers are belatedly but successfully adapting to the new news environment. I — Arianna Huffington

Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives. — Charles Wheelan

As in most obituaries, the author said little about the man; they rarely do. But the reticence here was greater than usual. It mentioned that Ravenscliff left a wife, but did not say when they married. It said nothing at all about his life, nor where he lived. There were not even any of the usual phrases to give a slight hint: 'a natural raconteur' (loved the sound of his own voice); 'Noted for his generosity to friends' (profligate); 'a formidable enemy . . .' (a brute); 'a severe but fair employer . . .' (a slave-driver); 'devoted to the turf' (never read a book in his life); 'a life-long bachelor' (vice); 'a collector of flowers' (this meant a great womaniser. Why it came to mean such a thing I do not know.) More browsing — Iain Pears

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back. — Amor Towles

Too many people are overly respectful, braying, 'You're so brave' and Irv fell smack into that trap. After all what's so courageous about having cancer? Once we have it, what choice do we have? But the worst thing of all - and thank God Irv doesn't do this, at least not yet - is all this nonsensical talk about a patient's courageous struggle with cancer that all too often ends in defeat. How many obituaries do you see stating that so-and-so lost their courageous battle with cancer? I hate that! I absolutely hate it! If someone put that in my obituary, I'd come back and kill him! — Irvin D. Yalom

I think the idea of fact-checking, I think the idea that you come up through a system where you know how to cover night cops, and then you go on, and you go on to various beats, including writing obituaries, and you get names right, you know how to spell them, really has some advantages to it. — Juan Williams

I think it would be funny for people to read in obituaries of me that my major contribution to the arts was the popularization of the phrases 'neutral facial expression' and 'screaming in agony.' — Tao Lin

I watched the coral reefs that I studied as a student vanish in the blink of an eye, and for decades I wrote and spoke of ocean obituaries. But big scary problems without solutions lead to apathy, not action. — Nancy Knowlton

David [Halberstam] kept on doing what he did because he loved it. One of the obituaries I read quoted him as saying that he did journalism for the same reason the great Julius Irving did basketball: He loved doing it even when he was having a bad day. — Jonathan Yardley

People have been writing premature obituaries on the women's movement since its beginning. — Ellen Goodman

One day a little old lady came and asked my name, saying she couldn't read my nametag. I told her and reached for the little slip of paper she held, but she put it behind her back. It seemed she wanted to chat before giving it up. Fine with me. We chatted about our matching cardigans (the fact that I dress like a little old lady was not lost on me) and we chatted about how the Portland weather bothered her bones. We talked for a long while about her husband and how much she'd grown to hate him over the years. Then, since I guessed I'd earned her trust, she handed me her slip of paper. It was for a book on exotic poisons. I got her the book and spent the next few weeks scanning the obituaries for every old man that had died. So, yes, folks I may be an accomplice to murder. Don't say there's no excitement at the library. — Nick Pageant

The Echo was a rag specializing in yard sales, area sports, and town politics. The residents scanned those things, he supposed, but mostly bought the paper for the obituaries and Police Beat. Everybody liked to know which of their neighbors had died or been jailed. — Stephen King

guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back." They — Amor Towles

Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries - but it is a force stronger than crime. I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses ... in the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land. — Robert A. Heinlein

Metaphysics keeps surviving its obituaries. — Mason Cooley

I feel like my career has been a series of glowing obituaries. — Michael Ian Black