“If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.”
Source: Love Is the Higher Law
“I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day.”
Richard Ames; chapter 3, p. 27
Source: The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985)
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Do you have more details about the quote "I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day." by Robert A. Heinlein?
Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author 1907–1988Related quotes
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
Clarence Darrow
(1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 10 "Child Training"
The last line here has sometimes been misquoted as "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure." It has also been attributed to, among others, Mark Twain and Winston Churchill. The misquoted version also frequently begins, "I've never wished a man dead..." or "I never wanted to see anybody die..."
Context: Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.
Willa Cather
(1873–1947) American writer and novelist
Source: Willa Cather in Europe (1956), Ch. 13 (10 September 1902)
Nancy Peters
(1936) American writer and publisher
Edward Epstein, "S.F. Finds Its Voice", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/08/12/MN76094.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 1998-08-12.
On Laurence Ferlinghetti becoming San Francisco's first poet laureate.
1990s
“I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) American author and humorist
Tom Lehrer
(1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician
Introduction to "Alma"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)
Context: Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read.
It was that of a lady named Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe. And, among these lovers, who were listed in the obituary, by the way, which is what made it so interesting, there were three whom she went so far as to marry: One of the leading composers of the day, Gustav Mahler, composer of "Das Lied von der Erde" and other light classics, one of the leading architects, Walter Gropius, of the "Bauhaus" school of design, and one of the leading writers, Franz Werfel, author of the "Song of Bernadette" and other masterpieces.
It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
