May the dead forgive me, I can do no otherBut as I am commanded; to do more is madness.' - Ismene.
— SophoclesWaiting for something or somebody for hours, for days and even for years is a common human behavior. Take the word ‘waiting’ out of your dictionary! Move! Act! These are the words and the behaviors you need! The dead can wait for, but the quick must not!
— Mehmet Murat ildanFrom personal experience, I know for sure that the number one thing that saddens the dead more than our grief — is not being conscious of their existence around us. They do want you to talk to them as if they were still in a physical body. They do want you to play their favorite music, keep their pictures out, and continue living as if they never went away. However, time and 'corruption' have blurred the lines between the living and the dead, between man and Nature, and between the physical and the etheric. There was a time when man could communicate with animals, plants, the ether, and the dead. To do so requires one to access higher levels of consciousness, and this knowledge has been hidden from us. Why? Because then the plants would tell us how to cure ourselves. The animals would show us their feelings, and the dead would tell us that good acts do matter. In all, we would come to know that we are all one. And most importantly, we would be alerted of threats and opportunities, good and evil, truth vs. Fiction. We would have eyes working for humanity from every angle, and this threatens 'the corrupt'. Secret societies exist to hide these truths, and to make sure lies are preserved from generation to generation.
— Suzy KassemThe dead do not needaspirin orsorrow,I suppose.But they might needrain.Not shoesbut a place towalk.Not cigarettes,they tell us,but a place to burn.Or we're told:space and a place to flymight be thesame.The dead don't need me.Nor do theliving.But the dead might needeachother.In fact, the dead might needeverything weneedandwe need so muchif we only knewwhat itwas.It isprobablyeverythingand we will allprobably dietrying to getitor diebecause wedon't getit.I hopeyou will understandwhen I am deadI got as muchaspossible.
— Charles BukowskiWhen we are asleep, so it seems to me, we sleep surrounded by all the years. I have imagined, sleeping, that I heard the footsteps of the long-dead; I have held conversations with them, and with the blank-faced people I was yet to meet, conversations that seemed of unbearable poignancy, though when I woke I could remember only a few words, and those not words that possessed, waking, any emotional significance to me. It is said that this is because content is divorced from emotion in sleep, as though the sleeping mind read two books at once, one of tears and lust and laughter, the other words and phrases picked up from old newspapers, from grimy handbills blowing along the street and conversations overheard in barbershops and bars, and the banalities of radio. I think rather that we have forgotten on waking what the words have meant to us, or have not learned as yet what they will mean. But the worst thing is to wake and remember that we have been talking to the dead, having never thought to hear that voice again, having never any expectation of hearing it again before we ourselves are gone.
— Gene WolfeWe owe it to the dead to dance on their graves.
— Marty RubinSometimes all we need to be able to continue aloneare the deadrattling the wallsthat close us in.
— Charles BukowskiThe cemetery is the home of those who are not here, come in.
— Italo CalvinoThe country people, indeed, did not always clearly distinguish between the Fairies and the dead. They called them both the 'Silent People'; and the Milky Way they thought was the path along which the dead were carried to Fairyland.
— Hope MirrleesThe dead will not die completely till the day they are remembered by no one!
— Mehmet Murat ildan