#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

Yet for quixotic reasons--namely, that I enjoyed writing obits--I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move. ↗

— Avi Steinberg

#death #obituary #death

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure. ↗

— Clarence Darrow

#die #few #i #never #notices

You know, one of the only times I ever wrote about art was the obituary of Warhol that I did for the Village Voice. ↗

— Barbara Kruger

#art #did #ever #i #know

I always wondered what hearing one's own obituary might sound like, and I sort of feel like I may have just heard part of it at least. ↗

— Spencer Abraham

#feel #heard #hearing #i #i always

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

— James Joyce

#obituary #life

[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