Susanna Kaysen Quotes

People come. They go. Dying is the same as rehab or moving back to Missouri. It just means I won't be seeing them again.

I wanted to acknowledge that life goes on but that death goes on, too. A person who is dead is a long, long story.

Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it's like they didn't fade away at all.

Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves. The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on. It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

Those who in living fill the smallest space, In death have often left the greatest void.

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.

as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.

It's a taboo subject. How the dead are betrayed by the living. We who are living--we who have survived--understand that our guilt is what links us to the dead. At all times we can hear them calling to us, a growing incredulity in their voices, You will not forget me -- will you? How can you forget me? I have no one but you.

Will you remember me when I'm gone?

Well the truth is, everybody, when they die, leaves a void that cannot be filled.

We have this time to meet and do something, or just be together, and then we lose it and move to another kind of time, another kind of being, I guess. Those left behind must mourn, remember, and live on as we know.

The body is the one thing you have to say goodbye to. You can hold on to your memories. You can hold on to the spirit. That's part of the package that you love and the part that comforts you.

Oh, I'll be forgotten too, don't worry.

I don't believe in the afterlife, so I do think when somebody passes, it's worthy of note.

I don't know what they'll say when I die. I don't give a damn, but they'll probably cry.

I've dealt with losing close ones before, and I've been around friends that have lost friends at a young age. I think it's important to think about - not necessarily death, but about life and think about where you're going and how you want to be remembered and the legacy you want to leave.

The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

I don't give a toss about being remembered after my death.

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Just to be remembered is good enough for me. Lots of people are forgotten.

I miss all of my old friends who have passed away. Sometimes you just don't understand why they were taken so soon. I loved and miss Johnny Cash. I miss my old buddy Johnny Paycheck, who happens to be buried in an area of the cemetery that I bought for my family.

My death is incidental, and I worry very much about my loved ones and, you know, would like to make it as easy as possible for them. Or wish I could will away whatever, you know, the sadness they will feel when I die. But for me, nothing. The world goes on.

As soon as the dirt is hitting the casket, it'll all be forgotten.

The longer your life goes on, the more death you face.