W. H. Auden Quotes

I didn't want to see them lower him into the ground in the spot he'd picked out with his dad, and I didn't want to see his parents sink to their knees in the dew-wet grass and moan in pain.

[In the aftermath of death] Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.

Death was a big part of my life growing up. I went to lots of funerals.

I grieve for every death.'It breaks my heart to think about a family weeping over the loss of a loved one. I understand the anguish that some feel about the death that takes place.

When friends and lovers die and your world gets quieter; that's when the silence comes closer; that's when next isn't the least bit theoretical or abstract.

The war has carried mourning into almost every home … it can almost be said that the heavens are hung in black

My sister died in Brooklyn.

When anyone dies, it's sad.

My best girl is dead.

Losing a wife can be very hard. In my case, it was almost impossible.

Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known.

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

I’ve lost someone, too. And there were no rules for how to deal with the death of someone you loved. You had to accept that the loss would always stay with you, like a reminder note pinned to the inside of your jacket. But there were still opportunities for happiness. Even joy.

He stopped loving her today, they placed a wreath upon his door.

Sooner or later we all lose our loved ones. We all have to suffer, every last one of us.

What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.

Wiped the cold dew-drops from his cheek And sought the mourner's side again. "Once more, dear lady, I must speak: Your last remaining son was slain Just at the closing of the fight; Twas he who sent me here to-night." "God knows," the man said afterward, "The fight itself was not so hard."

Graves are for the living, not the dead. It gives us something to concentrate on instead of the fact that our loved one is rotting under the ground.

When you lose someone you love, you die too, and you wait around for your body to catch up.

Tears could not be equal, if I wept diamonds from the skies," Jenks whispered, empty and bereft. "My word silent, though I should howl. Muffled by death, my wings can't lift me high enough to find you. I feel you within. Unaware of my pain. Not knowing why I mourn. And why I breathe alone.

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved

I hate funerals. They aren't for the guy who's dead. They're for the guys who are left alive and enjoy mourning.

Thousands of people are being buried and no one attends the funerals,' said one of the soldiers. 'In peacetime it's the other way round: one coffin and a hundred people carrying flowers.

sometimes there's nothing to say about death.