Tombstone Quotes

He blamed television, movies, and books for his love of ghosts. It was a fascination that’s been with him since his youth. He always loved watching or reading anything that had to do with ghosts and haunted locations, especially historic sites like New Orleans, Salem, Tombstone, Gettysburg, and Old San Juan.

What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their carving your name on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the gilding?

He thought himself awake when he was already asleep. He saw the stars above his face, whirling on their silent and sleepless axis, and the leaves of the trees rustling against them, and he heard small changes in the grass. These little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they were (but never saw), then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling into the scented turf, into the warm ground, into the unending waters under the earth.

Jev was certain the words “should’ve known better” would go somewhere on her tombstone, but at the moment her focus shifted to the dozens of angry pixies honed in on her.

Katherine McIntyre

Wyatt Earp had been born, and born again, and now there would be a third life, for the iron fist that had seized his soul in childhood had lost its grip at last. The long struggle for control was over, and in its place, he found a wordless acceptance of a truth he'd always known. He was bred to this anger. It had been in him since the cradle. He'd never bullied neighbors or beaten a horse. He'd never punched the front teeth out of a six-year-old's mouth or hit a woman until she begged. But he was no better than his father, and never had been. He was far, far worse.

Mary Doria Russell

You are a cool cemetery.You have the sinner’s graveYou have the saint’s earthcollidingYou have all the bedsnarrow as a knife;as if a rally of tombstones to defend death.But you can’t really postponethe inauguration of my burial,can you?From the poem - Few Words to Cemetery

The graveyard is not the final resting place of our dear departed but an ephemeral repository of their remains. The real graveyard, however, is somewhere deep in our heart, where we can always visit them at any time of the day, talk about some unforgettable summers, or cry in solitude as if they were always there for us to stay. And should our twilight come, when we can no longer see the light of the day, some people dear to us will build a graveyard in their hearts. They will let us stay for a while or perhaps longer, as long as they continue to remember, but it does not matter anymore. What is comforting to know, no matter how tragic or tranquil our death may be, somewhere somehow someone will always build a sublime place for us to stay. (Danny Castillones Sillada, The Graveyard In Our Heart)

Danny Castillones Sillada

My life will end someday, but it will end at my convenience.

Michael Bassey Johnson

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

Then on your tombstone, where you only get a little bit of space to sum up your life, some wax-faced creep chisels a set of meaningless numbers instead of poetry or a secret love or the name of your favorite candy. In the end, all you get is a few words.

Scott Nicholson

I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment'.