W. S. Merwin Quotes

I wish I can meet my wife in the hereafter, but I don't think I will. I just cease to exist just as she has ceased to exist.

They are all gone into the world of light, and I alone sit lingering here.

Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advanced a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod.

I think everyone, especially after the passing of a loved one, starts to hope that maybe there will be something better on the other side.

The dead are never far from us. They're in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.

As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.

I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.

Lady," she whimpered softly, wondering if she would meet her wolf again when she was dead.

The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear- Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.

Lines I die but when the grave shall press The heart so long endeared to thee When earthy cares no more distress And earthy joys are nought to me. Weep not, but think that I have past Before thee o'er the sea of gloom. Have anchored safe and rest at last Where tears and mouring can not come. 'Tis I should weep to leave thee here On that dark ocean sailing drear With storms around and fears before And no kind light to point the shore. But long or short though life may be 'Tis nothing to eternity. We part below to meet on high Where blissful ages never die.

Would you know my name If I saw you in heaven Will it be the same If I saw you in heaven I must be strong, and carry on Cause I know I don't belong Here in heaven Would you hold my hand If I saw you in heaven Would you help me stand If I saw you in heaven I'll find my way, through night and day Cause I know I just can't stay Here in heaven

The dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they let go hold of the earth . . . and the ambitions they had . . . and the things they suffered . . . and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth - that's the way I put it - weaned away.

If suddenly you do not exist, If suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you die. I shall go on living.

Death is an awful thing. I don't believe in it myself.

Death is very mysterious to us. One moment someone is there with us, and the next moment they're not.

I have got to the point in my life when a lot of people I know have died or are dying, so I realise that somewhere outside the pearly gates is a queue, shuffling nearer and nearer to the celestial box office.

I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be.

I think that nothing teaches you more about life than death and dying.

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

Americans in the Civil War period were very interested in Heaven and what it might be like, because they were having to face the fact that many of their loved ones were gone and many of their loved ones, they hoped, were in this other realm called Heaven.

I do fear death. But what I actually fear is not dying. I mean, true, it will be sad. But I know that there is a better place waiting for me.

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.

I envy the dead.

As a child, I didn't know what they mean by 'to die.' So I grew up in a place where people used to die all the time, but a child is not allowed to see a dead body. When you ask, 'Where is so-and so?' you're told, 'He's gone to another world where we all go to live in the future.'

We weep over the graves of infants and the little ones taken from us by death; but an early grave may be the shortest way to heaven.