#obituary

Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium. ↗

— Philip Guedalla

#bounded #definite #east #fiction #history

Read your own obituary notice; they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life. ↗

— James Joyce

#obituary #life

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary. ↗

— Brendan Behan

#except #obituary #own #publicity #such

An obituary should be an exercise in contemporary history, not a funeral oration. ↗

— Peter Utley

#contemporary history #exercise #funeral #history #obituary

The lions of hard rock, guys like Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Brian Johnson, Rob Halford, these monsters feel completely timeless, iconic, eternal. They simply shall not, will not, do not die. It's almost impossible to imagine a musical world without Robert Plant. No metal fan of any stripe can imagine a day when, say, Iron Maiden shuts it all down because Bruce Dickinson turned 85 and suddenly can't remember the lyrics to "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Metal revels in the raw energy and unchecked phantasmagorical ridiculousness of youth. It is all fire and testosterone and rebellious fantasy. It doesn't go well with reality. So it is for hard rock and a guy like Dio, an elfin titan with an undying love for lasers and sorcery, dragons and kings. The man wrote some terribly corny metal songs, but he sang every one with a ferocity and love and total honesty. He also wrote some of the finest hard rock melodies of all time, sang them with a precision and love unmatched by any hard rock singer since. It's a rare thing to give metal some heartfelt props. It is time. Raise your devil horns and salute. ↗

— Mark Morford

#rock-music #ronnie-james-dio #imagination

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice. ↗

— Brendan Behan

#good #notice #obituary #publicity

Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper. ↗

— Billy Sunday

#comes #epitaph #final #leave #live

When a writer dies you get a higher standard of obituary. ↗

— Arthur Smith

#get #higher #higher standard #obituary #standard

The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #death #despair #eternal-life #heaven

[José] Saramago for the last 25 years stood his own with any novelist of the Western world [..] He was the equal of Philip Roth, Gunther Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. His genius was remarkably versatile — he was at once a great comic and a writer of shocking earnestness and grim poignancy. It is hard to believe he will not survive. ↗

— Harold Bloom

#obituary #equality