#obituary

When I die, if the word 'thong' appears in the first or second sentence of my obituary, I've screwed up. ↗

— Albert Brooks

#die #first #i #obituary #screwed

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

An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing. ↗

— Quentin Crisp

#form #installment #last #missing #obituary

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 don't care if the New York Times writes an obituary for me. I just want you to write one. ... You say you're not special because the world doesn't know about you, but that's an insult to me. I know about you. ↗

— John Green

#love #obituary #relationship #death

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

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

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