Papageorge Obituary Quotes

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

I get up every morning and read the obituary column. If my name's not there, I eat breakfast. ~ George Burns

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

There was a Dana Phelps with a son named Brandon, but they didn't live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Phelpses resided in a rather tony section of Greenwich, Connecticut. Brandon's father had been a big-time hedge fund manager. Beaucoup bucks. He died when he was forty-one. The obituary gave no cause of death. Kat looked for a charity - people often requested donations made to a heart disease or cancer or whatever cause - but there was nothing listed. ~ Harlan Coben

In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters ~ James Frey

The hairstyle that was chosen would impact how everyone - every filmgoing human - would envision me for the rest of my life. (And probably even beyond - it's hard to imagine any TV obituary not using a photo of that cute little round-faced girl with goofy buns on either side of her inexperienced head.) ~ Carrie Fisher

Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction. ~ Clarence Darrow

Human stories are practically always about one thing, really, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death ...
... (quoting an obituary) 'There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that ever happens to man is natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident, and even if he knows it he would sense to it an unjustifiable violation.' Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key spring of The Lord Of The Rings ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life. ~ James Joyce

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

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

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

Yet for quixotic reasons
namely, that I enjoyed writing obits
I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move. ~ Avi Steinberg

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

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

When my obituary notice at last appears in The Times, and they say: 'What, I thought he died years ago,' my ghost will gently chuckle. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

It's unarguable to say that every one of us has been moved by the beauty of what I have called snapshots, but for photographers they are charms and proverbs, and like lightening or wild strawberries ... ~ Tod Papageorge

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

There's the obituary to look for the next week, six column inches about nothing that really mattered ~ Chuck Palahniuk

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 few years ago I wrote two versions of my obituary, the one I wanted and the one I was heading for. They were very different. I realized I needed to make some big changes if I was going to look back and be proud of my life. I am making those changes, and now I have a life worth living. ~ Roz Savage

The obituary writers drew their incomplete sketches, touring through his life like travelers to England who do not ever see swans, sheep, bicycles, and blue eyes. ~ Mark Helprin

You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice. ~ Barbara Kruger

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

EVEN THOUGH I KNEW it was going to be what she would ask me, Graciela McCaleb's request gave me pause. Terry McCaleb had died on his boat a month earlier. I had read about it in the Las Vegas Sun. It had made the papers because of the movie. FBI agent gets heart transplant and then tracks down his donor's killer. It was a story that had Hollywood written all over it and Clint Eastwood played the part, even though he had a couple decades on Terry. The film was a modest success at best, but it still gave Terry the kind of notoriety that guaranteed an obituary notice in papers across the country. I had just gotten back to my apartment near the strip one morning and picked up the Sun. Terry's death was a short story in the back of the A section. ~ Michael Connelly

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

Very few, even among those who have taken the keenest interest in the progress of the revolution in natural knowledge set afoot by the publication of the 'Origin of Species'; and who have watched, not without astonishment, the rapid and complete change which has been effected both inside and outside the boundaries of the scientific world in the attitude of men's minds towards the doctrines which are expounded in that great work, can have been prepared for the extraordinary manifestation of affectionate regard for the man, and of profound reverence for the philosopher, which followed the announcement, on Thursday last, of the death of Mr Darwin. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

When your friend who died was still alive, did you ever tell him?"

"Tell him what?"

"That you're… what's the word? Celibate?" Tony asked, trailing his fingers along the buttons on the remote control but not really finding himself able to change the channel. His name, his daughter's name, it all could've easily become a statistic, an obituary, had they not left the tower when they did.

"I'm asexual, not a celibate," replied the lawyer, "and sure, I told him…" She froze for a moment, averting her eyes to the ugly gray-and-red carpeting on the floor. "Clarence didn't care, he was married, anyway. He always used to tell me, "you know, you'd make one hell of an ace attorney, Bailey! ~ Rebecca McNutt

By being fictions and, at the same moment, returning their subjects to us with a compelling fidelity, both photographs and poems work with the same surprise ... both strike us as if they were simultaneously remembrances and revelations. ~ Tod Papageorge

If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something you weren't, perhaps, or otherwise take liberties with your memory, what writer would you choose? ~ Padgett Powell

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

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

Until today, you may not have realized that your life provides the content of your obituary. Just for today, examine your life. Think about all of the things you want to leave behind. Remember, the good thing about doing this today is that you still have time to rewrite your life's content if necessary. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

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

Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium. ~ Philip Guedalla

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

It would be too much for me to deal with to be sitting up there next to God, Bon Scott, Sid Vicious, and Jimi Hendrix, and hear somebody read my obituary from below:
NIKKI SIXX DIED TODAY ... FUCKING GOLFING ~ Nikki Sixx

There's no bad publicity except an obituary. ~ Brendan Behan

God will come barefoot
looking for his lost shoe
eaten up by pseudo sons
waiting with charts of Obituary
at every unreal heart-scope
while volcanoes gather around me
( Selected Poems of Malay Roychoudhury ) ~ Malay Roychoudhury

If you accept the idea that photographers, or some of them, are actually artists, then you have to look at their work less as a document of something than as a personal vision of the world. ~ Tod Papageorge

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

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

[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

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

A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward. ~ George Jean Nathan

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