Al Purdy Quotes

I've always been slightly preoccupied with death or whatever those kind of silly big questions people will tell you to not spend your time worrying about.

I don't believe in any particular definition of the afterlife, but I do believe we're spiritual creatures and more than our biology and that energy cannot be destroyed, but can change. I don't know what the afterlife is going to be, but I'm not afraid of it.

The only substance properly so called is the soul.

I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!

The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis's quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?

The soul, which is spirit, can not dwell in dust; it is carried along to dwell in the blood.

Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me.

To me, the soul is a part of us that never dies. It's what we come in with.

The human being is flesh and consciousness, body and soul; his heart is an abyss which can only be filled by that which is godly.

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should be only organized dust.

I'm interested in the eternal soul. That's what I write about.

We want to give you the roses when you're dead. That's how human beings think. I try not to think like a human.

I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.

The poet does not fear death, not because he believes in the fantasy of heroes, but because death constantly visits his thoughts and is thus an image of a serene dialogue.

We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.

I am not the perishable body, but the eternal Self.

Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.

Unbeing dead isn't being alive.

My language and my sensibility are yearning to admit a kind of religious or transcendent dimension. But then there's the reality: there's no Heaven, no afterlife of the sort we were promised, and no personal God.

It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.

In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up?

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.