Stewart O'Nan Quotes

No one is truly dead until they are no longer loved.

Love and memory last and will so endure till the game is called because of darkness.

When I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais lying in my heart.

I can feel his presence here in every stone he has touched, every person he has lifted up, every street and alley and city that he has changed in the few years of his life, because he is the Republic, he is our light, and I love you, I love you, until the day we meet again I will hold you in my heart and protect you there, grieving what we never had, cherishing what we did. I wish you were here. I love you, always.

Take from my palms, to soothe your heart, a little honey, a little sun, in obedience to Persephone's bees. You can't untie a boat that was never moored, nor hear a shadow in its furs, nor move through thick life without fear. For us, all that's left is kisses tattered as the little bees that die when they leave the hive. Deep in the transparent night they're still humming, at home in the dark wood on the mountain, in the mint and lungwort and the past. But lay to your heart my rough gift, this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees that once made a sun out of honey.

In the end, all you want is someone to long for you when it comes time to put you in the ground.

Fathers die.You keep on loving them in any way you can.You can't hide him away in your heart.

Death, vicious death, Leave a green branch for love.

What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb. "Fear?" he thought for a moment. 'Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?" That's big. "Yes. But there's something else." What else? He leaned forward. "Being forgotten," he whispered.

Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.

She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But she sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far.... Mariam is in her own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns.

He would say, "How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away..." And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.

I fell into a sound sleep and dreamed that I was at a banquet back in Gion, talking with an elderly man who was explaining to me that his wife, whom he'd cared for deeply, wasn't really dead because the pleasure of their time together lived on inside him.

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.

I think that one of the reasons why people look towards the end of humanity is that people are afraid to die alone. If you die alone, the people you love will miss you, or if they die, you miss them - the sorrow is inevitable. When you truly love someone, the thought of losing them forever is horrible.

The paradox is, I can't miss the good things about my father while he is alive, but I will of course miss him... when he is dead.

I miss Betty madly. I loved her. Whenever people talk about her, I get really nostalgic. There are parts of her still with me; I played her for four years and, of course, the lines get blurred.

I'm 78. We've lost a lot of our great stars. I can't hang out with those who aren't here. The phone service to Heaven is so bad, you know. But I get to visit with their memories.

Love is the one thing everyone is looking for, and death is the one thing everyone's running from.

An exile reads change the way he reads time, memory, self, love, fear, beauty: in the key of loss.

Love means holding on to someone just as hard as you can because if you don't, one blink and they might disappear...forever.

Your skin upon my skin, in the beating of our hearts, may the living let us in, before the dead tear us apart.