“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.”
Source: The Year of Magical Thinking
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Joan Didion 48
American writer 1934Related quotes

“We should keep the dead before our eyes, and honor them as though still living”

“Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.”
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

“The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 50)

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
Source: Quoted by Gerald Gawalt in " In His Own Words: Library Exhibition Celebrates Tercentenary of Benjamin Franklin's Birth https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0601/franklin.html"

Interview on Entertainment Tonight, as quoted in "Oprah Winfrey Offers Words of Wisdom in Wake of Deadly Las Vegas Shooting", KTVB (2 October 2017)
Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover