Quotes about the dead
page 34

Bob Dylan photo

“Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you...”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Jordan Peterson photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“People often ask me what it’s like to live with bodyguards. The short answer is that it’s better than being dead.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 9, “America” (p. 113)

“The first station of trust in God is that servant be between the hands of God exactly as the dead body is between the hands of the one who washes the dead.”

Sahl al-Tustari (818–896) arabian Sufi, Islamic theologian

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 55

“There are those who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The True Game, The Song of Mavin Manyshaped (1985), Chapter 2 (p. 31)

Ernst Jünger photo

“Without the head, man is a dead body. So too, without prayers, all other acts of worship are lifeless.”

Ashraf Ali Thanwi (1863–1943) Indian Muslim scholar

Ashraf Ali Thānwī, Hayātul Muslimeen p.71

Annie Ernaux photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Margaret Cho photo

“You will never make love, laugh, fight, eat, go to the movies, kiss, smile, dance, sing, run, skate, play the piano, buy candy for, argue jokingly, tell stories, look longingly at, jump on the bed with, pet the dogs with your faces, sing along with the song in the car and get the words wrong, share a secret, gossip, cop a feel, go hear a band that you both love, share a really good meal, carpool with people you don't like and make fun of them secretly later, cry, comfort, scratch backs, insist on pizza, catch them staring at you, put your arms around them, stay up too late, lean against warm bodies, feel safe with their feet sliding next to yours in bed, raise your children, go to boring dinner parties and get too drunk to drive home so you sleep in the car, spend alternate holidays with each others families, have uncontrollable lust with, followed by mind blowing fuck sessions lasting for hours and hours at a time, take a bath so hot one of you has to get out, all naked and wet and red and dizzy but not embarrassed because this is who you love and rarely are you shy with them, watch a TV show you both hate because the remote control is broken--merely happily, and maybe sometimes unhappily, share your life, and be with them, but you can't, because they're dead. Suddenly, unjustly, untimely, irretrievably--unconscionably dead.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, DEATH

Alexis Karpouzos photo