As quoted in "Interview: Elaine Dundy, celebrated author of the seminal book, Elvis & Gladys: Genesis of The King, talks to EIN" (2004) http://www.elvisinfonet.com/dundy1.html
Context: I didn't know Elvis was alive until he was dead. But how many stories are like mine? Until his death August 16, 1977, it was possible to get through a day without hearing his name. Of course I remember all the early outrage he caused but believe me it was easy not to see any of his films. It doesn't mean that music has not always dominated my heart and mind. During the years barren of Elvis I did have my record player on constantly but it was playing folk, blues, and jazz. It was playing Al Jolson, Maurice Chevalier, Billie Holiday, Ethel Merman, and Noel Coward. The human voice raised in song has always been important to me so I include Miles Davis whose trumpet is such an important human voice. Then after his death in London in taxis, on radio and TV I heard nothing but Elvis records and that grabbed my attention.
“I didn't marry her family.'
'Of course not. But you always do. Dead or alive.”
David and Colonel John Boyle in Ch. 7
The Garden of Eden (1986)
Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 131
“You should be as alive as you can, until you're totally dead!”
On getting old.
What It Is (2009)
“So the bastard's dead? Too bad we didn't capture him alive!”
Said in April 1945 — On hearing of Hitler's suicide, as quoted in The Memoirs of Georgy Zhukov http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/zhukov1/22.html
Contemporary witnesses
Source: The Year of Magical Thinking
“The live dead-man is dead as a producer and alive insofar as he consumes”
139
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
“The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive”
