Quotes About Obituaries

During my past career as a journalist, I relished writing obits and equally dreaded phoning relatives for the necessary facts. But to my surprise and great relief, they often wanted to talk - they wanted their recently deceased loved ones recorded in print.

You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?"

I didn't realize it at the time, but writing obituaries was one of best jobs that I've ever had. After all, it's the only time that someone will ever laminate my work and put it in their Bible. Plus, let's be honest, writing obits in Sarasota is a very busy job. The old saying was that old people lived in Miami, but their parents lived in Sarasota.

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.

Before I write, I like to read obits in 'The Times' because they're well written, and I like the little details. It gets the energy going in the morning. I really like the obits of old Hollywood actors and actresses.

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.

The pure and sinless did not exist, or else died unnoticed and with no obituary. The idea seemed persuasive. Those who merited obituaries had usually achieved things, fought for their ideals, and when locked in battle, it wasn't easy to remain entirely honest and upright. Today's battles were all for material gain, anyway. The crazy idealist was extinct – survived by the crazy pragmatist Ã¢â'¬Â¦

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.

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.

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?

Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries - but it is a force stronger than crime.

It's not the loss of life that makes the death bitter -- it's the obituaries.

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.

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.'

New England's slavers and their ships did not become part of the history of American slavery, though they wrote some of its early chapters. These men would be described in their obituaries as West Indies merchants and sea commanders.

The striking thing about death, she thought, was its eventfulness. It made you see you were leading a real life. Real life at last! you could say. Was that why she read the obituaries each morning, hunting familiar names? Was that why she carried on those hushed, awed conversations with the other workers when one of the nursing home patients was carted away in a hearse?

I was chastised for writing several obituaries for Malcolm X, exploring different aspects of his writing. One teacher in particular told me, didn't I think I was beating a dead horse? and dismissively threw my paper on my desk.

She doesn't like obituaries. She says they're half bragging and half crying, and it's not a good combination" -Maisie

There comes a time in the life of every government when the media decide that it has blundered so fatally that a complete recovery is now impossible. In such phases - and every single political party has encountered them - editorials become political obituaries that declare the end.

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.

I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure. -

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.

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

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