Gronert Obituary Quotes

[I]n contrast to the common belief that they are the world's greatest cynics, the best journalists are the world's great idealists. They have experienced firsthand the great soothing balance of human existence. For every disgrace there is triumph, for every wrong there is a moment of justice, for every funeral a wedding, for every obituary a birth announcement. ~ Anna Quindlen

He recalls that the room went 'icy cold' as his patient Catherine strangely began to channel messages from Dr Weiss's own deceased family members; things she could not have possibly known. "She didn't know anything about me," Dr Weiss says. "I didn't even have diplomas in my office. This was before the internet, and she's telling me "You're Father's here and your son." Dr Weiss remembers his shock that a stranger shared so many facts about his life, including that his Father had tragically died from a heart condition. "She tells me my daughter is named after my Father..which she is, and it is an unusual name. She said, "Your Father is here; he died from his heart." And she went into other medical details. "I'm thinking, "What is this? How does she know this?" My Father never had an obituary. ~ Tessy Rawlins

Write your dream obituary and live that life! ~ Tami Holzman

When other helpers fail and comforts flee, when the senses decay and the mind moves in a narrower and narrower circle, when the grasshopper is a burden and the postman brings no letters, and even the Royal Family is no longer quite what it was, an obituary column stands fast. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

One of the things I can do is to try to put myself in different kinds of movies and that kind of subtly changes my work. By the time my obituary is written, I want there to be a great western and a great comedy. ~ Ethan Hawke

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure. ~ Clarence Darrow

Men in the uniform of Wall Street retirement: black Chesterfield coat, rimless glasses and the Times folded to the obituary page.. ~ Jimmy Breslin

I have to erase my Google search histories, because they always lead to an obituary. ~ Carrie Brownstein

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

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

The black hole of the galaxy swallows the boiling energy of human fury. Soon my waning fume will be obscured forevermore, all insignia of my ionized essence tucked into the anonymous pleat of the universe's billowing skirt. Until the coarse earth's rank mustiness calls for me, can I take comfort living purposefully in the rhythms of an ordinarily life? Can I unabashedly absorb the scintillating jewels in the daily milieu? Can I savor an array of pleasantries with my tongue, ears, nose, eyes, lips, and fingertips? Can I take solace in the tenderness of the nights by singing out songs of love and heartache? Can I devote the dazzle of daylight and the vastness of the night's starriness to investigate life, make a concerted effort to reduce imbedded ignorance, and penetrate layers of obdurate obliviousness? Can I conduct a rigorous search for wisdom irrespective of wherever this journey takes me? Can I make use of the burly pack of prior personal experiences to increase self-awareness? Can I aspire to go forward in good spirits and cheerfully accept all challenges as they come? Can I skim along the delicate surface of life with a light heart until greeting an endless sleep with a begrudging grin in the coolness of the ebbing light? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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

So what if someone wrote your obituary ... that doesn't mean you are obligated to die. ~ Lou Holtz

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

I contemplated suicide. My main concern was that I would not make the New York Times obituary page. ~ Art Buchwald

When the 'Guardian' is commissioning writers to write obituary pieces about you and your career ... it doesn't get much nastier than that. And you've just got to go, 'It doesn't actually matter.' ~ James Corden

An obituary should be an exercise in contemporary history, not a funeral oration. ~ Peter Utley

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up. ~ Benjamin Franklin

When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit ~ Nicole Krauss

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice. ~ Brendan Behan

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

The least dignified thing that can happen to a man is to be murdered. If he dies in his sleep he gets a respectful obituary and perhaps a smiling portrait; it is how we all want to be remembered. But murder is the great exposer: here is the victim in his torn underwear, face down on the floor, unpaid bills on his dresser, a meager shopping list, some loose change, and worst of all the fact that he is alone. Investigation reveals what he did that day - it all matters - his habits are examined, his behavior scrutinized, his trunks rifled, and a balance sheet is drawn up at the hospital giving the contents of his stomach. Dying, the last private act we perform, is made public: the murder victim has no secrets. ~ Paul Theroux

Everybody is a potential murderer. I've never killed anyone, but I frequently get satisfaction reading the obituary notices. ~ Clarence Darrow

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

Some of the plants have obituary names: Iris, Basil, Rue, Rosemary, and Verbena. Some, like meadowsweet and cowslips, sweet flag and spikenard, are like the names of Shakespeare fairies. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The dreams fresh on her mind, she wrote about the Ada she remembered. The obituary wasn't the sad, plodding list of mother and father, dead children, and surviving family. It honored a strong, funny woman. She proofed it a second time with a smile on her face. Ada would have slapped her knee and crowed along with her. ~ Laura Trentham

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing. ~ Quentin Crisp

He once told a reporter he wanted his obituary to be short - "just make it born in Russia, first lesson at 3, debut at 7, debut in America in 1917". ~ Jascha Heifetz

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

I want to leave behind something worth more than obituary posters when I am gone. ~ Vincent Okay Nwachukwu

The following obituary appeared in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph of Sept. 16, 1958:

A GREAT POET died last week in Lancieux, France, at the age of 84.

He was not a poet's poet. Fancy-Dan dilletantes will dispute the description "great."

He was a people's poet. To the people he was great. They understood him, and knew that any verse carrying the by-line of Robert W. Service would be a lilting thing, clear, clean and power-packed, beating out a story with a dramatic intensity that made the nerves tingle.

And he was no poor, garret-type poet, either. His stuff made money hand over fist. One piece alone, The Shooting of Dan McGrew, rolled up half a million dollars for him. He lived it up well and also gave a great deal to help others.

"The only society I like," he once said, "is that which is rough and tough - and the tougher the better. That's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people."

He found that kind of society in the Yukon gold rush, and he immortalized it. ~ Robert W. Service

And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part. ~ O. Henry

The boy, Max Rüst, will later on become a tinker, father of seven more Rüsts, he will go to work for the firm of Hallis & Co., Plumbing and Roofing, in Grünau. At the age of 52 he will win a quarter of a prize in the Prussian Class Lottery, then he will retire from business and die during an adjustment suit which he has started against the firm of Hallis & Co., at the age of 55. His obituary will read as follows: On September, suddenly, from heart-disease, my beloved husband, our dear father, son, brother, brother-in-law, and uncle, Paul Rüst, in his 55th year. This announcement is made with deep grief on behalf of his sorrowing family by Marie Rüst. The notice of thanks after the funeral will read as follows: Acknowledgment. Being unable to acknowledge individually all tokens of sympathy in our bereavement, we hereby express our profound gratitude to all relatives, friends, as well as to the tenants of No. 4 Kleiststrasse and to all our acquaintances. Especially do we thank Herr Deinen for his kind words of sympathy. At present his Max Rüst is 14 years old, has just finished public school, is supposed to call by on his way there at the clinic for the defective in speech, the hard of hearing, the weak-visioned, the weak-minded, the in-corrigible, he has been there at frequent intervals, because he stutters, but he is getting better now. ~ Alfred Doblin

As the victim of those impulses she must be looking in the paper for his obituary. ~ Saul Bellow

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

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

You should never write your own resume, personal ad, or obituary. In all three cases it is better to show your humility by letting someone else lie for you. ~ David Hayden