Irvine Welsh Quotes

Social media reactions to celebrity death have taken on a predictable pattern: an outpouring of shock with expressions of grief, followed by a ghoulish need to know all the details, to see the scene of the death and the family in mourning. Then a post-mortem dissection of all the perceived flaws the celebrity had.

I grieve for every death.'It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place.

The death of a famous person is different from the death of a loved one, whether it is Michael Jackson, Frank McCourt, or Walter Cronkite. We didn't know any of them personally, and yet, we experience a sense of loss.

Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.

I couldn't believe that people went to see 'Saw,' that people actually lined up.

We don't help people mourn in our society.

I've been in so many funeral scenes from The Sopranos, and I think I've even been in one on Sons of Anarchy. Those scenes, as a human being, are the most tedious scenes, of all time. You're waiting, all day, in the blistering hot heat. So, I didn't need to be there.

Growing up, there were a lot of funerals that I attended, and the adults at the funerals went out of their way to make sure that I wasn't traumatized or overly depressed by them. So death is always a celebration of life for me, and it's also hugely dramatic.

Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.

The horrible thing about Death of princess Diana - the sacrificial lamb, which she was. And I believe, in a sense, John Kennedy, Jr. was the same thing. These are people that we loved so much that we drove them berserk with all the attention and they basically didn't have any particular stellar talents. They were just in some kind of a position somewhere where we fixed on them and they became, literally, sacrificial lambs

It's important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.

Kennedy's assassination was the opening salvo in the social revolution of the sixties. In some ways, perhaps, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa dying when they did, and how they did, represent the opening salvos of a social revolution in the nineties.

The grave is a crucible where memory is purified; we only remember a dead friend by those qualities which make him regretted.

There are few of us but who have been touched somehow by death. Some may not have been touched closely by it nor yet have kept vigil with it, but somewhere along our lives, most of us are sorely bereft of someone near and deeply cherished - and all of us will some day meet it face to face.

Which lady would I like to meet? Um, I don't know that there's anybody left that I didn't meet. But the one that I really wanted to meet died and that was Princess Diana. I really wanted to get to know her. I like her.

A terrific sadness swept over Jerry. As if somebody had died. The way he felt standing in the cemetry that day they buried his mother. And nothing you could do about it.

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.

I never go to weddings. Waste of time. Person can get married a dozen times. Lots of folks do. Family like ours, know everybody in the state of Texas and around outside, why, you could spend your life going to weddings. But a funeral, that's different. You only die once.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

They say funerals are not for the dead but for the living. Those rites are what permit you to move on, so if you don't deal with the remains, you can never deal with the memories. That might be true; we may have walked in their dust down on Venice Minor, but it's not the same as a proper good-bye.

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

You have to put your character to rest after x amount of years.

Death was a big part of my life growing up. I went to lots of funerals.

Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?

Hired mourners at a funeral say and do - A little more than they whose grief is true