"When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me"."
— Erma Bombeck

"If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went."
— Will Rogers

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
— Dante Alighieri (Inferno)

"I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."
— Albert Camus (The Stranger)

"Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us."
— Jim Carroll

"Tell them stories."
— Phillip Pullman

"You are dead- what am I speaking to?"
— Phillip Pullman

"Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean."
— David Searls

"'What question did you bring?' Bink inquired somewhat nervously...'I asked whether I have a soul,' the monster said seriously. Again Bink had to control his reaction. A year's service for a philosophical question? 'What did he tell you?' 'That only those who possess souls are concerned about them.' 'But--but then you never needed to ask. You paid a year for nothing.' 'No. I paid a year for everything. Possession of a soul means that I can never truly die. My body may slough away, but I shall be reborn, or if not, my shade will linger to settle unfinished accounts, or I shall reside forever in heaven or hell. My future is assured; I shall never suffer oblivion. There is no more vital question or answer. Yet that answer had to be in the proper form. A simple yes or no answer would not have satisfied me; it could be a blind guess, or merely the Magician's offhand opinion. A detailed technical treatise would merely have obfuscated the matter. Humfrey phrased it in such a way that its truth was self-evident. Now I need never doubt again.' Bink was moved. Considered that way, it did make sense. Humfrey had delivered good value. He was an honest Magician. He had shown the manticora--and Bink himself--something vital about the nature of life in Xanth. If the fiercest conglomerate monsters had souls, with all that implied, who could condemn them as evil? (141)."
— Piers Anthony (A Spell for Chameleon)

"I don't like Paradise,
As they probably don't have obsessions there."
— Alda Merini

"The day after Paul Newman was dead, he was twice as dead."
— Maurice Sendak

"Truth was ever the afterlife of words.
~Drusas Achamian"
— Scott R. R. Bakker

"Memory is the only afterlife I have ever believed in. But the forgetting inside us cannot be stopped. We are programmed to betray."
— Michael Ignatieff (Scar Tissue)

"Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all."
— William Butler Yeats

" "She's had a long life. Now she's going to the Lord."
"Frankly it creeps me out a little when you say things like that," Simon said.
"It shouldn't. If you don't like 'Lord,' pick another word. She's going home. She's going back to the party. Whatever you like."
"I suppose you have some definite ideas about an afterlife."
"Sure. We get reabsorbed into the earthly and celestial mechanism."
"No heaven?"
"That's heaven."
"What about realms of glory? What about walking around in golden slippers?"
"We abandon consciousness as if we were waking from a bad dream. We throw it off like clothes that never fit us right. It's an ecstatic release we're physically unable to apprehend while we're in our bodies. Orgasm is our best hint, but it's crude and minor by comparison.""
— Michael Cunningham (Specimen Days)

"Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one."
— Bruce Chatwin (The Songlines)