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The Living Quotes

Browse 7 quotes about The Living.

The Living Quotes

“The dead do not need aspirin or sorrow, I suppose. but they might need rain. not shoes but a place to walk. not cigarettes, they tell us, but a place to burn. or we're told: space and a place to fly might be the same. the dead don't need me. nor do the living. but the dead might need each other. in fact, the dead might need everything we need and we need so much if we only knew what it was. it is probably everything and we will all probably die trying to get it or die because we don't get it. I hope you will understand when I am dead I got as much as possible.”

LifeNeedsTryingRememberDeathPoetryHopeKnowledgeAliveDyingSorrowPoemRainNeedAfterlifeDeadAfter DeathEverythingRememberingTryAspirinBukowskiCigarettesAfter LifeThe DeadTriedThe AfterlifeThe Living
Book:The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966
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“Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: We (and then we say our own names), Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the Living and the Dead, by the Past and the Future, by Memories and Hopes, that if a Vision comes begging at our door we will take it in and warm it at our hearth, and that we will not be wiser than the foolish nor more cunning than the simple, and that we will remember that he who rides the Wind needs must go where his Steed carries him.”

MemoriesThe PastVisionsHopesThe FutureThe DeadOathsThe LivingAmbrose HoneysuckleNathaniel ChanticleerRiding The Wind
Book:Lud-in-the-Mist
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“When do you want to receive tribute, dead or alive? Without dispute, it is cute to pay tribute to the living. Destitute of words to salute good repute is no excuse. Our charity should begin with the living. Parents are a good starting point. We can't reciprocate by giving them life but we can at least impart quality and jollity to their lives by rendering them occasional tribute. If you have swallowed the pleasantries meant for your loved ones, please vomit them now to avoid the constipation of regret.”

RegretParentsTributeThe DeadVomitSwallowConstipationThe LivingJollity
Author:Vincent Okay Nwachukwu
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“I don't believe in funerals. Funerals aren't for the dead. The dead are gone. They couldn't care less. Funerals are for the living. They're for the people trying to feel better about the things they could have said, the things they could have done for the dead while they were still alive. The dead don't give a damn. The dead couldn't care less about what's being said to them, about them. Hell, they're dead. The dead know the living aren't there for them, but for themselves. To feel better, to feel less guilty, less regretful, to feel loved, better appreciated by all the other living people who, like them, should have paid attention to the dead while it still mattered, while they were still alive. So screw funerals. Forget the dead. Tend to the living. Before it's too late. Before they're dead”

FuneralsThe DeadThe Living
Book:Celebrating Time Alone: Stories Of Splendid Solitude
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“George is very far, right now, from sneering at any of these fellow creatures. They may be crude and mercenary and dull and low, but he is proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be counted in their ranks—the ranks of that marvelous minority, The Living. They don't know their luck, these people on the sidewalk, but George knows his—for a little while at least—because he is freshly returned from the icy presence of The Majority, which Doris is to join. I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life-energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body—even this beat-up carcass—that still has warm blood and semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh! The scowling youths on the corners see him as a dodderer no doubt, or at best as a potential score. Yet he claims a distant kinship with the strength of their young arms and shoulders and loins. For a few bucks he could get any one of them to climb into the car, ride back with him to his house, strip off butch leather jacket, skin-tight Levi's, shirt and cowboy boots and take a naked, sullen young athlete, in the wrestling bout of his pleasure. But George doesn't want the bought unwilling bodies of these boys. He wants to rejoice in his own body—the tough triumphant old body of a survivor. The body that has outlived Jim and is going to outlive Doris.”

AliveSurvivorThe Living
Book:A single man
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