Cemetery Quotes

“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills”
― William Shakespeare, Richard II

“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais

“Within its gates I heard the sound
Of winds in cypress caverns caught
Of huddling tress that moaned, and sought
To whisper what their roots had found.
(“A Dream of Fear”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror

“The first thing you notice about New Orleans are the burying grounds - the cemeteries - and they're a cold proposition, one of the best things there are here. Going by, you try to be as quiet as possible, better to let them sleep. Greek, Roman, sepulchres- palatial mausoleums made to order, phantomesque, signs and symbols of hidden decay - ghosts of women and men who have sinned and who've died and are now living in tombs. The past doesn't pass away so quickly here.
You could be dead for a long time”
― Bob Dylan

“One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“I got the sexton, who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there, when I saw her face again—it is hers yet—he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change, if the air blew on it...”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The moon fled eastward like a frightened dove, while the stars changed their places in the heavens, like a disbanding army.

'Where are we?' asked Gil Gil.

'In France,' responded the Angel of Death. 'We have now traversed a large portion of the two bellicose nations which waged so sanguinary a war with each other at the beginning of the present century. We have seen the theater of the War of Succession. Conquered and conquerors both lie sleeping at this instant. My apprentice, Sleep, rules over the heroes who did not perish then, in battle, or afterward of sickness or of
old age. I do not understand why it is that below on earth all men are not friends? The identity of your misfortunes and your weaknesses, the need you have of each other, the shortness of your life, the spectacle of the grandeur of other worlds, and the comparison between them and your littleness, all this should combine to unite you in brotherhood, like the passengers of a vessel threatened with shipwreck. There, there is neither love, nor hate, nor ambition, no one is debtor or creditor, no one is great or little, no one is handsome or ugly, no one is happy or unfortunate. The same danger surrounds all and my presence makes all equal. Well, then, what is the earth, seen from this height, but a ship which is foundering, a city delivered up to an epidemic or a conflagration?'

'What are those ignes fatui which I can see shining in certain places on the terrestrial globe, ever since the moon veiled her light?' asked the young man.

'They are cemeteries. We are now above Paris. Side by side with every city, every town, every village of the living there is always a city, a town, or a village of the dead, as the shadow is always beside the body. Geography, then, is of two kinds, although mortals only speak of the kind which is agreeable to them. A map of all the cemeteries which there are on the earth would be sufficient indication of the political geography of your world. You would miscalculate, however, in regard to the population; the dead cities are much more densely populated than the living; in the latter there are hardly three generations at one time, while, in the former, hundreds of generations are often crowded together. As for the lights you see shining, they are phosphorescent gleams from dead bodies, or rather they are the expiring gleams of thousands of vanished lives; they are the twilight glow of love, ambition, anger, genius, mercy; they are, in short, the last glow of a dying light, of the individuality which is disappearing, of the being yielding back his elements to mother earth. They are - and now it is that I have found the true word - the foam made by the river when it mingles its waters with those of the ocean.' The Angel of Death paused. ("The Friend of Death")”
― Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, Ghostly By Gaslight

“There's nothing here. Nothing at all.'

Marina gave me a look that I could not fathom.

'You're wrong,' she said. 'The memories of hundreds of people lie here. Their lives, their feelings, their expectations, their absence, the dreams that never came true for them, the disappointments, the deceptions and the unrequited loves that poisoned their existence... All that is here, trapped for ever.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Marina

“I stopped in St. Bernadette's Cemetery one of my favorite places... The trunks of six giant oaks rise like columns supporting a ceiling formed by their interlocking crowns. In the quiet space below, is laid out an aisle similar to those in any library. The gravestones are like rows of books bearing the names of those whose names have been blotted from the pages of life; who have been forgotten elsewhere but are remembered here.”
― Dean Koontz, Fear Nothing

“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

“Then Mount Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute.
Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick.
Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows

“The twin guardian angels whose eyes and hands and wings had focused protective attention on the souls that lay there no longer faced each other. They stared blindly into a random middle distance. The scroll they held between them proclaiming eternal resurrection was broken in two.”
― Clare Morgan, A Book for All and None

“There were dozens of stones of all sizes in the small meadow. Tall stones, bigger than either of the boys, and small ones, just the right size for sitting on. There were some broken stones. The Runt knew what sort of place this was, but it did not scare him. It was a loved place.”
― Neil Gaiman, M Is for Magic

“Not that there seems to be any appropriate place to bury someone, but these municipal cemeteries, or any cemetery at all for that matter, like the ones by the highway, or the ones in the middle of town, with all these bodies with their corresponding rocks - oh it's just too primitive and vulgar, isn't it? The hole, and the box, and the rock on the grass? And we glamorize this process, feel it fitting and dramatic, austerely beautiful, standing there by the hole as we lower the box. It's incredible. Barbaric and base.”
― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“At the crisp, inky hour of midnight, Jack and I are married atop Spiral Hill in the Death Door's Cemetery. Wind stirs the bone-dry leaves, and Jack takes my soft rag doll hands in his--the coolness of his fingers calming the flutter rippling across my stitched seams.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“A brief yet reflective walking through a cemetery is enough to teach us more than all the philosophy of the world during a lifetime.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“Ducks make the best soup. Campbell’s used to, but Joseph A. Campbell died on March 27th, 1900, and the FoodDrink that comes in their cans now tastes like a cemetery.”
― Jarod Kintz, Duck Quotes For The Ages. Specifically ages 18-81.

“It is the sunset rather than the sunrise that suits the atmosphere of the cemeteries!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“It was midnight and, framed by the cemetery gates, the figure stood tall and sinister. He was silhouetted by the weak light from a gibbous moon that made his muscular build and towering height seem much, much more than imposing. In one hand he held a heavy canvas sports bag. The other clutched a shovel that rested casually over one broad shoulder. If an errant driver or a late-night dog walker had glimpsed him, they would have thought he looked like a man with a strong sense of purpose.
But the roads were as silent as a held breath.”
― Ashley Lister, Blackstone Towers

“I like to read the gravestones, like to know who people were and when they died and how long the women lived after they buried their men. It sets you wondering how they managed and whether they were lonely.”
― P.D. James, Trilogy of Death: Unsuitable Job For A Woman / Innocent Blood / The Skull Beneath the Skin

“Death Demands A Recount by Stewart Stafford

The premature burial bell rings,
The body six feet below is alive,
Purgatory's choking siren fades,
Only darkness hears the bell peal.

Even if some listeners reacted,
A creeping terror stops them,
And dodging a vampire's bite,
Or the zombie’s flailing attack.

No, let the restless corpse lie,
Tighten the Reaper's icy grip,
Silence stills a memorial plot,
A blackout hush, no reprieve.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“A graveyard.
It's the largest cemetery I've ever seen--a place Jack would surely love.
A long rectangle of green lawn lined with rows and rows of old, moss-coated and weather-worn gravestones. Rain pounds the earth, and the cold tickle of air against my neck reminds me of the cemetery in Halloween Town. A feeling that exists in every cemetery, it seems. That hint of death. Of sorrow. Of lives brought to an end. But I don't have to go far before I find a small stone structure, an ornate mausoleum with spires along the roofline and a copper door, tarnished green from the rain. A tomb where the dead are placed to rest.
I glance up the path, the cemetery glistening in the wet air. I have passed through many realms, all the way into the human world to a city made strangely silent, and now this mausoleum is my way home.
My way back to Jack.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“The cemetery looked more like an abandoned town than a graveyard. Over half the site was vacant. That was because the people who planned to be laid to rest there were still alive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973

“I'd hate to be buried with my coworkers!”
― Steven Magee

“Every life holds an epic tale, even if no one alive remembers it.”
― Greg Melville, Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries

“S'il existe un cimetière des mots arrachés aux êtres qui comprennent, je veux pouvoir m'y promener.”
― Élise Turcotte, L'apparition du chevreuil