“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

— Thornton Wilder, book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927)
Context: Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

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Thornton Wilder61

American playwright and novelist 1897–1975

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