“"There are some dead who are more alive than the living."
"No, no! It would be more true to say that there are some who are more dead than the dead."
"Maybe. In any case there are old things which are still young."
"Then if they are still young we can find them for ourselves…. But I don't believe it. What has been good once never is good again."”

“Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead – a dead parent, for example – can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.”

“The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.”

“Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.”

“This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”

“Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.”

“A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more.”

“A dead man in Spain is more alive than a dead man anywhere in the world.”

“There is some comfort to be had in contemplating the folly of so many dead, don't you think? … and more comfort still in contemplating the continuity.”

“I hate the ugly, hate the old,
I hate the lame and weak,
But more than all I hate the dead
That lie so still in their earthen bed
And never dare to rise.”