My Grandfather Died Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

I put my back against the wall. I slide down to the floor. I imagine Ryan sitting next to me. I imagine him rubbing my back, the way he did when my grandfather died. I imagine him saying, "She's going to a better place. She's OK." I imagine the way my grandfather might have done this for my grandmother when she lost her own mom or her own grandmother. I imagine my grandmother sitting where I am now, my grandfather kneeling beside her, telling her all the things I want to be told. Holding her the way that only someone in particular can hold you. When I'm her age, when I'm lying in a hospital bed, ready to die, whom will I be thinking of?

It's Ryan. It's always been Ryan. Just because I can live without him doesn't mean I want to.

And I don't. I don't want to.

I want to hear his voice. The way it is rough but sometimes smooth and almost soulful. I want to see his face, with his stubble from never shaving down to the skin. I want to smell him again. I want to hold the roughness of his hands. I want to feel the way they envelop mine, dwarfing them, making me feel small.

I need my husband. ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

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

The boy went back to his family there, in the distance, in a distance he did not find there in the distance. My grandfather died counting sunsets, seasons, and heartbeats on the fingers of his withered hands. He dropped like a fruit forbidden a branch to lean its age against. They destroyed his heart. He wearied of waiting here, in Damur. He said goodbye to friends, water pipe, and children and took me and went back to find what was no longer his to find there. Here the number of aliens increased, and refugee camps got bigger. A war went by, then two, three, and four. The homeland got farther and farther away, and the children got farther and farther from mother's milk after they had tasted the milk of UNRWA. So they bought guns to get closer to a homeland flying out of their reach. They brought their identity back into being, re-created the homeland, and followed their path, only to have it blocked by the guardians of civil wars. They defended their steps, but then path parted from path, the orphan lived in the skin of the orphan, and one refugee camp went into another. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

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

My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted. ~ Al Pacino

I learned to speak Italian, somewhat. Definitely enough to get around in Italy. My grandfather always used to swear at my grandmother in Italian. ~ Jen Lancaster

A degree from UC Berkeley will never change the fact that I cannot understand my grandfather when he asks for more coffee." - Esther G. Belin (Navajo) from In the Cycle of the Whirl. L ~ MariJo Moore

Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. ~ Black Elk

We will never forget those like my great-grandfather who fought at Vicksburg. ~ Roy Barnes

Once upon a time, my mother lived in the posh downtown of Homs, Syria. She described my grandfather as a king in a storybook, atop a horse, wearing a didashah and pointing a long arm. ~ Mona Simpson

I remember my grandfather believed women were second-class citizens and told my mother that it was a shame she had brains because she was a girl and shouldn't carry on her education. ~ Sarah Gavron

She helps me to the bathroom, helps me wash, then helps me put a gazillion tangles in my hair while she shampoos it. And she actually thinks we're going to leave it that way.
"I'm not going downstairs looking like a hobo," I tell her. "We have to comb it."
"That thick mess will break this flimsy comb. Can't you just run your fingers through it?"
It's weird to be arguing about my hair when we still haven't discussed my wound, how I got it, and how I came to be snoring in Galen's bed. We both seem to appreciate the bizarreness at the same time. Mom raises a brow. "Don't think you get special treatment just because you can make a whale do the tango. I'm still your mother."
We both laugh so hard I think I feel a tiny rip in my newly dressed wound. Without warning, Mom throws her arms around me, careful to avoid touching it. "I'm so proud of you, Emma. And I know your father would be, too. Your grandfather can't stop talking about it. You were amazing."
Ah, the bonding power of tangled hair and dancing whales.
She releases me the second before it gets awkward. "Let's get you dressed. We have a lot to discuss. And I get you're starving. Rachel made you…uh…Upchuck Eggs."
"She gets an A for effort. ~ Anna Banks

My mum left my dad when I was six months old, so I don't know him at all. I had no male figures in my life, really. I had my godfather, but he's more like a grandfather, so I was quite sheltered. I've never tried to find my father. ~ Catherine Tate

I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory. ~ Katharine Cornell

My grandfather and my father disagreed about music, not least of all because my dad wanted to improvise. It wasn't just that he wanted to play different music; it was just that he came off the dots. ~ Elvis Costello

No matter what ailed you, a small glass of schnapps would take care of it at once. This particular remedy was so good my grandfather would frequently take the cure even before there was anything wrong with him. ~ Molly Picon

My grandfather was a very mystical guy who travelled from Argentina to Chile, across the mountains with a donkey, carrying the Torah. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

My childhood name that my father gave me, my mother, my grandmother, grandfather, family and friends all call me T.I.P. ~ T.I.

I was very fortunate that all my holidays I'd spend with my grandfather, experiencing a much more traditional way of life and listening to these wonderful stories, which I now feel are such an important part of Indian thinking. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

My grandfather worked in a shoe factory - he was an Italian immigrant. My father was the first to go to college in the family. ~ Camille Paglia

Letter 68


A pod of whales was lying like long reclining Buddhas on the sea.
My sister and I put our ears to the bottom of the boat so we could listen to their songs.

We turned to my grandfather and asked, "What do their song mean?"

"The whales do not sing because they have an answer," he said.
"They sing because they have a song. ~ Gregory Colbert

My grandparents were far more English in their manners than they were Chinese. For example, we spoke English at home, had afternoon tea every day, and my grandfather, who attended university in Scotland, would smoke his pipe after dinner. ~ Kevin Kwan

Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you've fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you'd still get in line to do it again. ~ Holly Black

I lived on the Greek side of Cypress, and I think that's also where my interest in politics really started to come alive. It was the first time that I was told I couldn't go somewhere: My grandfather's house is on the Turkish side, but we were not allowed to go there. ~ Hannah Simone

My grandfather got me mad and I peed inside his orange juice and asked him if it's tangy. ~ Cam'ron

'Don't worry about senility', my grandfather used to say. ~ Bill Cosby

As I look at the barn in my ninth decade, I see the no-smoking sign, rusted and tilting on the unpainted gray clapboard. My grandfather, born in 1875, milked his cattle there a century ago. ~ Donald Hall

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books. ~ Jon Meacham

micel walcan wolde we do from that daeg micel walcan in the great holt the brunnesweald but though we walced for wices months years though this holt becum ham to me for so long still we did not see efen a small part of it so great was this deop eald wud. so great was it that many things dwelt there what was not cnawan to man but only in tales and in dreams. wihts for sure the boar the wulf the fox efen the bera it was saed by sum made this holt their ham. col beorners and out laws was in here as they was in all wuds but deop deoper efen than this was the eald wihts what was in angland before men

here i is meanan the aelfs and the dweorgs and ents who is of the holt who is the treows them selfs. my grandfather he telt me he had seen an aelf at dusc one daeg he seen it flittan betweon stoccs of treows thynne it was and grene and its eages was great and blaec and had no loc of man in them. well he was blithe to lif after that for oft it is saed that to see an aelf is to die for they sceots their aelf straels at thu and aelfscot is a slow death ~ Paul Kingsnorth

I'm a Texan. Some of me is still nestled up there in the Catskill Mountains: the summers I spent with my grandfather on the farm and the guys I played basketball with in high school. But then that was it. ~ Jerry Jeff Walker

People can't believe how hard I work ... I love it. I think it just runs through my veins. My great-grandfather was a bellboy and had a dream to do a hotel chain, so I think I get it from him. ~ Paris Hilton

A doctor today would never prescribe the treatments my grandfather used in the Confederate Army, but a minister says pretty much the same thing today that a minister would have said back then. ~ John Templeton

My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master. ~ Malcolm X

What did the others give to each other?
Nothingness.
Granger stood looking back with Montag. Everyone must leave something behind
when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a
wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand
touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when
people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The
difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the
touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the
gardener will be there a lifetime. ~ Ray Bradbury

In 1964, I tried to convince my grandfather, who was active in the New York City firefighters union, to vote for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson because at the time I thought his approach to limited government was right on. ~ Joe Lhota

My mother was born in Burma, but my grandfather on her side was Indian-Spanish. So I have this quite exotic mix, which is reflected in my earliest memories, in our Wiltshire country kitchen, of gran, and aunts, cooking spicy stewy, casseroley curries, a version of Indian food with a Burmese twist. ~ Jamie Cullum

My grandfather was running Hillcrest Country Club, and that's where a whole group of Hollywood comedians hung out. ~ Leigh Steinberg

"So we'd get in a horse and buggy and we would go and park under a tree and we'd read poetry to each other." And my grandfather told me all the stories. I mean, their way of communicating ... They didn't have telephones, either, so they communicated with the written word. And I really ... That's how old [Bill] Clinton has become to me [ speaking of how he met Hillary Clinton]. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Knew that his God - for each man has his own God - let him wander there sometimes, perhaps with the ghost of one of the many dogs that had kept him company through his life yapping at his heels, flushing the birds from the rushes and chasing them for the joy of it. My grandfather used to say that if God did not allow a ~ John Connolly

My mom is a painter and photographer and my grandfather was an artist, so I've always been surrounded by creative people. ~ Dylan Lauren

Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano. ~ Caleb Landry Jones

There are no dirty words in this book, except for 'hell' and 'God', in case someone is fearing that an innocent child might see 1 ... Perhaps the only precept taught me by Grandfather Wills that I have honoured all my adult life is that profanity and obsceny entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their eyes and ears to you. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

After my grandfather began to be successful, he returned to the village where he was born and founded a primary school. ~ Guler Sabanci

The great-great-grandfather of my mother was probably using gelatins. ~ Jose Andres

My grandparents used to pray five times a day, but they were quiet about their own thing. Completely liberal day by day; my grandmother was a social worker and my grandfather was an engineer, but they never talked about religion. My entire life I couldn't remember one conversation I had with them about religion. ~ Mohsin Hamid

There is another difference between my grandfather and James B. Duke that may finally be more important than any other, and this was a difference of kinds of pleasure. We may assume that, as a boomer, moving from one chance of wealth to another, James B. Duke wanted only what he did not yet have. If it is true that he was in this way typical of his kind, then his great pleasure was only in prospect, which excludes affection as a motive. My grandfather, on the contrary, and despite his life's persistent theme of hardship, took a great and present delight in the modest good that was at hand: in his place and his affection for it, in its pastures, animals, and crops. ~ Wendell Berry

I was born in the small city of Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, in 1948. My parents were family physicians. My grandfather and great grandfather on my mother's side were geologists. ~ Elizabeth Blackburn

I spent time at my grandfather Dino's gourmet store where he brought in chefs from Naples to cook. I thought of them as rock stars. ~ Giada De Laurentiis

They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.
I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them?
I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.
I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.
We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way. ~ Sherman Alexie

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. ~ Ray Bradbury