Obituarist Quotes & Sayings

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Cheese! I exclaimed. It was a secret prayer, whose meaning was known only to God and to me. — Alan Bradley

Men ignorant of letters, studious for their bellies, and ignominiously lazy. — George Sandys

A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that. — A.A. Gill

Most non-readers are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom. — Tom Bissell

It is never too late to do anything in life. — Momofuku Ando

And therefore in geometry (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind), men begin at settling the significations of their words; which settling of significations, they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning. — Thomas Hobbes

Different ideas will capture my imagination and ask if they can be in a story. Sometimes they fit together and sometimes they don't. One notion leads to another and I might write pages that will have to go away later, but I'm sketching, getting to know a character, how he or she speaks or lives, so I just let it flow. Things start to click. I don't outline before starting, nor do I write one chapter at a time or even in chronological order. If I'm thinking about a scene, conversation, or event that will come later, I page down and write away. — Lisa Preston

I wanted to flog myself for reacting this way to him. — Nicole Williams

Lots of people are going to sell clothes online. But not a lot of people have built a brand, a living, breathing brand that people feel like they're part of. — Sophia Amoruso

You." The word was spat out at her, full of hatred. "What have you done to me? — Marissa Meyer

We stand in the awe of God's greatness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

No government can be trusted, that does not trust its own people with military-style arms of greater weight and power than those possessed by the central government itself. — Vin Suprynowicz

But all was fair in love and war. If I had to fight dirty to keep him, then I'd be the dirtiest motherfucker there ever was. "So what's it going to be, Trent?" I pressed. "Are you going to protect my heart and the love it holds for you, or are you going to walk away? — Cambria Hebert

A small cabin stands in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, about a hundred yards off a trail that crosses the Cascade Range. In midsummer, the cabin looked strange in the forest. It was only twelve feet square, but it rose fully two stories and then had a high and steeply peaked roof. From the ridge of the roof, moreover, a ten-foot pole stuck straight up. Tied to the top of the pole was a shovel. To hikers shedding their backpacks at the door of the cabin on a cold summer evening
as the five of us did
it was somewhat unnerving to look up and think of people walking around in snow perhaps thirty-five feet above, hunting for that shovel, then digging their way down to the threshold. [1971] — John McPhee

The captain swore polyglot -very polyglot- polyglot with bloom and blood. — Bram Stoker