Peter Milligan Quotes

To us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of all needs.

There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.

I'm 64 years old and, yeah, I went through a transition in my life last year, with the death of my son, that woke me up to a lot of things. You know, I'm perfectly happy in my own little groove. Marching along, building my company, and you know, a happy person.

People can be so neglectful of each other and of their own heritage - then death intrudes. Conversations we wish that we'd had earlier are had too late.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I'm so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don't have the guts to take their names out of the book.

If there's anything you want to ask your parents, ask them before they go, because once they go, they're gone.

I don't talk about my personal life, and I don't talk about death.

Silence is the last thing the world will ever hear from me.

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.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind.

Once, I went speeding past an old couple and smiled as I imagined their conversation: him grumbling about me and her telling him not to be such an old grouch. Then, suddenly I was in tears, thinking, 'I'll never get to be a grumpy old grandpa!'

If, like Harry Keogh, I could talk to the dead - God, there are an awful lot of people I would like to speak to! Not least my father. Being in the army for 22 years, I didn't see enough of him, and I know there are a great many things I could have learned from him.

You don't appreciate life until you get to the other side. Like lying in a hospital bed.

One half of my life has put the other half in the grave.

I remember, growing up, losing a sister, and - life is short. Make the most of your opportunities.

I do not remember any questions in my childhood other than questions about death and about loss, and it was clear that the books that filled the house were not as interesting as the conversations outside.

Death makes us sad, but it can also make us feel more alive.

Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.

[In the aftermath of death] Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.

Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death's silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?

Yesterday I lived, today I suffer, tomorrow I die; but I still think fondly, today and tomorrow, of yesterday.

When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.

In death, lie. In living, cry. Carry me home to remember to be remembered.