Quotes about afterlife
A collection of quotes on the topic of afterlife, people, life, believer.
Quotes about afterlife

In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
Context: About belief or lack of belief in an afterlife: Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.
I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"
I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."

Quoted in " Goodbye Margherita Hack, “The Lady of the Stars.”", iitaly.org (1 July 2013) http://www.iitaly.org/magazine/focus/facts-stories/article/goodbye-margherita-hack-lady-stars?mode=colorbox.

“I regard the afterlife to be a fairy story for people that are afraid of the dark”

[The Female Woman, 1973, Davis-Poynter, London, ISBN 0706700988, unspecified page, unspecified chapter]

Quoted from the Discovery Channel, 15 August 2011.
"Stephen Hawking There is no God. There is no Fate." from episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L7VTdzuY7Y · [Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe?, http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/did-god-create-the-universe.htm, Discovery Communications, LLC., 7 August 2011, 4 July 2013]
Curiosity (2011)

Page 282 of An Anthropologist On Mars By Oliver Sacks

Bozell, Brent, Punk Rockers Knock Christmas, townhall.com, December 20, 2013, http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2013/12/20/punk-rockers-knock-christmas-n1766181, 2013-12-25

In A Man Without a Country (2005) p. 80–81 Vonnegut makes a very similar statement:
How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do. "If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?"
But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being.
I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake.
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

As quoted in Philosophy on the Go (2007) by Joey Green, p. 222
General sources

“…to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.”
Variant: To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
Source: Skinny Legs and All (1990)

“In the afterlife, people never forget to feed the dog.”
Friðrik the elf doctor
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 1, Chapter 12, “Raven’s Dance” (p. 392).

Episode 578: "Still More Scamlets" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDcLAeTm5AY, Channel Austin (November 9, 2008)
The Atheist Experience

“An attic’s the afterlife of a house,” said Otille, opening the door. “Or so my mother used to say.”
Source: Green Eyes (1984), Chapter 15, p. 201

“There is an afterlife to love
and there is love in the afterlife.”
"Heart"
Goddess Gone Fishing for a Map of the Universe (2012)

Message of "The Visitor" Ch. 19
The Riverworld series, The Magic Labyrinth (1980)

City of Truth as reprinted in Nebula Awards 28, p. 257
Short fiction

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 475

"God is not enough" (23 May 2008) http://youtube.com/watch?v=1czXvHSjDac&feature=related)
2008

Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 31.

Part 1, Provener; The questionnaire, in use for 1,100 years, is used once every ten years to determine if civilization outside the monastic compound is beginning to regress.
Anathem (2008)
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 308
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)
Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

The Discover Interview: Lisa Randall (July 2006)
A Voice from the Attic (1960)

“I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.”
"Conversations with Helmholtz"
Getting Even (1971)

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 4 (p. 17)

San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/10/DD861808G2.DTL

Ann Druyan interviewed by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. — "Ann Druyan Talks About Science, Religion, Wonder, Awe … and Carl Sagan" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/. Skeptical Inquirer 27 (6). November–December 2003.
Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 20 (p. 408)

Biocentrism and the Existence of God http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/does-god-exist-or-not-new_b_802103.html, Huffington Post, January 3, 2011.

Review of The Tree of Life (2 June 2011) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998
Reviews, Four star reviews
Context: Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling. … I don't know when a film has connected more immediately with my own personal experience. In uncanny ways, the central events of The Tree of Life reflect a time and place I lived in, and the boys in it are me. If I set out to make an autobiographical film, and if I had Malick's gift, it would look so much like this. … There is a father who maintains discipline and a mother who exudes forgiveness, and long summer days of play and idleness and urgent unsaid questions about the meaning of things. … The film's portrait of everyday life, inspired by Malick's memories of his hometown of Waco, Texas, is bounded by two immensities, one of space and time, and the other of spirituality. The Tree of Life has awe-inspiring visuals suggesting the birth and expansion of the universe, the appearance of life on a microscopic level and the evolution of species. This process leads to the present moment, and to all of us. We were created in the Big Bang and over untold millions of years, molecules formed themselves into, well, you and me.
And what comes after? In whispered words near the beginning, "nature" and "grace" are heard. … The film's coda provides a vision of an afterlife, a desolate landscape on which quiet people solemnly recognize and greet one another, and all is understood in the fullness of time.

Context: I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

Source: The Riverworld series, To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), Chapter 1 (pp. 3-4)
Context: It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife.
He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!"
Of all the millions, he alone was awake.
Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 48
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

"When I Get to Heaven" · Live performance on Austin City Limits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPDFQRmG_M · Lyric video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EiV423j0M
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

On the appearance of ghosts in Sick in “'THIS BOOK KEPT ME ALIVE': A CONVERSATION WITH POROCHISTA KHAKPOUR” https://psmag.com/social-justice/this-book-kept-me-alive-a-conversation-with-porochista-khakpour in Pacific Standard (2018 Jun 5)