Tombstones Quotes

“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”
― Shannon Alder

“Though angels were easy to finds in cemeteries, she said that she didn't especially care for funereal angels and tombstone cherubs -- she wanted her angels among the living, not watching over the already dead -- and thus she scoured parks and gardens for the angels with whom, on some level, she wanted to commune.”
― Chris Bohjalian, Secrets of Eden

“It's like a memorial to Atlantis or Lyonesse: these are the stone buoys that mark a drowned world.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead...

...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and her wrists dipped in blood that smelt of tin.

It was a day that abounded in peculiar traditions. Pass any candy store in the city and there'd be marzipan skulls and sugar fish and little white chocolate bones for 5 cents each. Pass any bakery and you'd see cakes slathered in blue icing, cakes sprinkled with sea-salt.If you made a Day of the Dead cake at home you always hid a coin in it, and the person who found it was supposed to live forever. Once, when she was four, Georgia had swallowed the coin and almost choked. It was still one of her favourite stories about herself. In the afternoon, there'd be costume parties. You dressed up as Lazarus or Frankenstein, or you went as one of your dead relations. Or, if you couldn't think of anything else, you just wore something blue because that was the colour you went when you were buried at the bottom of the ocean. And everywhere there were bowls of candy and slices of special home-made Day of the Dead cake. Nobody's mother ever got it right. You always had to spit it out and shove it down the back of some chair.

Later, when it grew dark, a fleet of ships would set sail for the ocean cemeteries, and the remembrance service would be held. Lying awake in his room, he'd imagine the boats rocking the the priest's voice pushed and pulled by the wind. And then, later still, after the boats had gone, the dead would rise from the ocean bed and walk on the water. They gathered the flowers that had been left as offerings, they blew the floating candles out. Smoke that smelt of churches poured from the wicks, drifted over the slowly heaving ocean, hid their feet. It was a night of strange occurrences. It was the night that everyone was Jesus...

...Thousands drove in for the celebrations. All Friday night the streets would be packed with people dressed head to toe in blue. Sometimes they painted their hands and faces too. Sometimes they dyed their hair. That was what you did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then, sooner or later, you turned blue forever.”
― Rupert Thomson, The Five Gates of Hell

“Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Now we lie here, a decapitated generation, our child-like names vanishing on tombstones, can't you see? Once there was Rock 'n' Roll, freedom of speech, baroque picnics on miraculous boats, there was resurrection on romantic lakes, there were melting kisses under golden trees, there was ticking laughter, clicking metaphors, there were wine and poetic sex, beauty...”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“She glanced around at the tombstones. “You’re surrounded by death here. Way too depressing. You really might want to think about getting another job.”
“You see death and sadness in these sunken patches of dirt, I see lives lived fully and the good deeds of past generations influencing the future ones.”
― David Baldacci, The Collectors

“The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by the Communists, at least after they had briefly employed it as a 'furniture facility.' It had then been vandalized and perhaps accidentally set aflame by incurious and callous local 'youths.' Only the well-crafted walls really stood, though a recent grant from the European Union had allowed a makeshift roof and some wooden scaffolding to hold up and enclose the shell until further notice. Adjacent were the remains of a mikvah bath for the ritual purification of women, and a kosher abattoir for the ritual slaughter of beasts: I had to feel that it was grotesque that these obscurantist relics were the only ones to have survived. In a corner of the yard lay a pile of smashed stones on which appeared inscriptions in Hebrew and sometimes Yiddish. These were all that remained of the gravestones. There wasn't a Jew left in the town, and there hadn't been one, said Mr. Kichler, since 1945.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Who chose burial monuments? Were the wishes of the deceased taken into consideration? It was a subject I'd never considered before.”
― Susan Hubbard, The Society of S

“You are a cool cemetery.
You have the sinner’s grave
You have the saint’s earth
colliding
You have all the beds
narrow as a knife;
as if a rally of tombstones to defend death.
But you can’t really postpone
the inauguration of my burial,
can you?

From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery”
― Munia Khan, Beyond The Vernal Mind

“When Harper was in among the stones she could see brass plaques screwed into the towering pillars of granite. One listed the names of seventeen boys who had died in the mud of eastern France during the First World War. Another listed the names of thirty-four boys who had died on the beaches of western France during the Second. Harper thought all tombstones should be this size, that the small blocks to be found in most graveyards did not even begin to express the sickening enormity of losing a virgin son, thousands of miles away, in the muck and cold. You needed something so big you felt it might topple over and crush you.”
― Joe Hill, The Fireman

“I didn’t have a good idea, but I had an idea. Which would be a fitting quote on my tombstone.”
― B.C. Johnson

“The moonlight covered the tombstones with an ethereal glow, and the statues
above the tombs stood like silent guards waiting for something to happen.”
― Alan Kinross, Longinus The Vampire

“Atârnați tăblițe deasupra mormintelor, ciopliți în piatră că totul a fost degeaba! Spuneți-le asta și morților!...”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

“Opening the box, they withdrew the thick plastic grave markers. His lips twitched as he scanned the epitaphs: R.I.P. Van Winkle, Dee Cayed, I.M. Gone, and Barry R. Bones. "Dracula, Fangs for the Memories," he read aloud and, chuckled.
Grace held up her favorite. "Rigger Mortys. Death Grips and Holds Me Tight, But I Shall Return on Halloween Night."
Tongue-in-cheek, he asked her, "What would your headstone say?"
"She Threw a Great Party," came to mind. "How about yours?"
"Death by Decorating.”
― Kate Angell, The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine

“Set within the sea of stones were little oval buildings, like beehives without openings. Marra knew at once that they were graves.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“I’m not even slightly interested in whether I’m remembered I say Ashes to ashes Dust to dust Gimme a tombstone if you feel you must
Sayin’ here lies a clown who wrote some songs
He talked too much and stayed too long”
― Tim Minchin