“
When a man you know to be of sound mind tells you his recently deceased mother has just tried to climb in his bedroom window and eat him, you only have two basic options. You can smell his breath, take his pulse and check his pupils to see if he's ingested anything nasty, or you can believe him.
”
”
Richard K. Morgan (The Steel Remains (A Land Fit for Heroes, #1))
“
Share and Enjoy' is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.
The motto stands-- or rather stood-- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives-- now deceased.
The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5))
“
A recently deceased American Zen master and navy veteran, John Daido Loori, used to say that those who think Buddhism is just about stillness end up sitting very silently up to their necks in their own shit.
”
”
Mark Epstein (The Trauma of Everyday Life)
“
Drinks heavily loaded with ice are reasonably effective, but the best way to cool down is to cuddle with a recently deceased person.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (The Days of Yay are Here! Wake Me Up When They're Over.)
“
Settled on the carriage seat, Olivia drew in a deep breath, the first in what felt like five years. she knew it was wrong, what she was feeling. Because of widow of only a week shouldn't wish to dance a jig. But God help her, that's precisely what part of her wanted to do. Not on the grave of her recently deceased husband, of course-that would be considered rude. Just off to the side would suffice.
”
”
Tamera Alexander (To Whisper Her Name (Belle Meade Plantation, #1))
“
Grace Slaughter - the surname of her fifth husband, a manufacturer of pharmaceutical toners and "prophylactic" products, recently deceased due to a ruptured peritoneum - was sharply chauvinistic and would allow no more than two exceptions to her all-American views, exceptions with which her first spouse, Astolphe de Guéménolé-Longtgermain, no doubt had something to do: cooking had to be done by French nationals of male gender, laundry and ironing by British subjects of female gender (and absolutely not by Chinese). That allowed Henri Fresnel to be hired without having to hide his original citizenship, which is what had to be done by the director (Hungarian), the set designer (Russian), the choreographer (Lithuanian), the dancers (Italian, Greek, Egyptian), the scriptwriter (English), the librettist (Austrian), and the composer, a Finn of Bulgarian descent with a large dash of Romanian.
”
”
Georges Perec (Life: A User's Manual)
“
Of course, a wandering mind is not always advisable for the recently deceased and is nearly never advisable for the beginning driver.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere)
“
Boy, Whitey, I hope I never see my name up there.
To Whitey Ford during scoreboard tribute on opening day to recently deceased Yankees.
”
”
Yogi Berra
“
Moreover, it is not just that the early documents are silent about so much of Jesus that came to be recorded in the gospels, but that they view him in a substantially different way -- as a basically supernatural personage only obscurely on Earth as a man at some unspecified period in the past, 'emptied' then of all his supernatural attributes (Phil.2:7), and certainly not a worker of prodigious miracles which made him famous throughout 'all Syria' (Mt.4:24). I have argued that there is good reason to believe that the Jesus of Paul was constructed largely from musing and reflecting on a supernatural 'Wisdom' figure, amply documented in the earlier Jewish literature, who sought an abode on Earth, but was there rejected, rather than from information concerning a recently deceased historical individual. The influence of the Wisdom literature is undeniable; only assessment of what it amounted to still divides opinion.
”
”
George Albert Wells
“
The sick suffer alone, they undergo procedures and surgeries alone, and in the end, they die alone. Transplant is different. Transplant is all about having someone else join you in your illness. It may be in the form of an organ from a recently deceased donor, a selfless gift given by someone has never met you, or a kidney or liver from a relative, friend or acquaintance. In every case, someone is saying, in effect, “Let me join you in the recovery, your suffering, your fear of the unknown, your desire to become healthy, to get your life back. Let me bear some of your risk with you.
”
”
Joshua Mezrich (How Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon)
“
There are two main reasons killers return to these scenes. One would be classified as signature behavior and the other as modus operandi—the psychic versus the practical aspect of the crime. The first is to relive the thrill and emotion of the crime. We have seen a number of offenders come back to masturbate on or around the victim’s body. We have even seen actual necrophiliacs who returned to have sex with their recently deceased victims. Ted Bundy was one of those. Clearly, Kondro did not fit this profile; once he was done with a victim, he was done, and blithely went about his business.
”
”
John E. Douglas (The Killer Across the Table)
“
I was assigned to the office of a recently deceased faculty member; the office hadn't been cleaned out yet, and a few days before the fall term began, I unlocked the door to find a dirty room whose bookshelves were crammed with empty bourbon bottles and crucifixes, mute testimony to the limits of literature as a sustaining comfort in life.
”
”
Maureen Corrigan (Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books)
“
And yet the appearance of death was just as awe-inspiring in this little man as it is in a great one: a man who so recently had been walking around, moving, playing whist, signing various documents, and frequently seen amongst the officials with his beetling eyebrows and twitching eye, was now laid out on a table, and the twitch was quite gone from his left eye, although one eyebrow was still raised in an interrogative arch. As to what the deceased was asking, whether he sought to know why he had died or why he had lived--that only God can say.
”
”
Nikolai Gogol (Dead Souls)
“
The Real World'
The real word doesn't take flight
the way dreams do.
No muffled voice, no doorbell
can dispel it,
no shriek, no crash
can cut it short.
Images in dreams
are hazy and ambiguous,
and can generally be explained
in many different ways.
Reality means reality:
that's tougher nut to crack.
Dreams have keys.
The real world opens on its own
and can't be shut.
Report canrds and stars
pour from it,
butterflies and flatiron warmers
shower down,
headless caps
and shards of clouds.
Together they form a rebus
that can't be solved.
Without us dreams couldn't exist.
The one on whom the real world depends
is still unknown,
and the products of his insomnia
are avaialble to anyone
who wakes up.
Dreams aren't crazy-
it's the real world that's insane,
if only in the stubbornness
with which it sticks
to the current of events.
In dreams our recently deceased
are still alive,
in perfect health, no less,
and restored to the full bloom of youth.
The real world lays the corpse
in front of us.
The real world doesn't blink an eye.
Dreams are featherweights,
and memory can shake them off with ease.
The real world doesn't have to fear forgetfulness.
It's a tough customer.
It sits on our shoulders,
weights on our hearts,
tumbles to our feet.
There's no escaping it,
it tags along each time we flee.
And there's no stop
along our escape route
where reality isn't expecting us.
”
”
Wisława Szymborska (Nothing Twice: Selected Poems / Nic dwa razy: Wybór wierszy)
“
For many years there have been rumours of mind control experiments. in the United States. In the early 1970s, the first of the declassified information was obtained by author John Marks for his pioneering work, The Search For the Manchurian Candidate. Over time retired or disillusioned CIA agents and contract employees have broken the oath of secrecy to reveal small portions of their clandestine work. In addition, some research work subcontracted to university researchers has been found to have been underwritten and directed by the CIA. There were 'terminal experiments' in Canada's McGill University and less dramatic but equally wayward programmes at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan and numerous other institutions. Many times the money went through foundations that were fronts or the CIA. In most instances, only the lead researcher was aware who his or her real benefactor was, though the individual was not always told the ultimate use for the information being gleaned. In 1991, when the United States finally signed the 1964 Helsinki Accords that forbids such practices, any of the programmes overseen by the intelligence community involving children were to come to an end. However, a source recently conveyed to us that such programmes continue today under the auspices of the CIA's Office of Research and Development. The children in the original experiments are now adults. Some have been able to go to college or technical schools, get jobs. get married, start families and become part of mainstream America. Some have never healed. The original men and women who devised the early experimental programmes are, at this point, usually retired or deceased. The laboratory assistants, often graduate and postdoctoral students, have gone on to other programmes, other research. Undoubtedly many of them never knew the breadth of the work of which they had been part. They also probably did not know of the controlled violence utilised in some tests and preparations. Many of the 'handlers' assigned to reinforce the separation of ego states have gone into other pursuits. But some have remained or have keen replaced. Some of the 'lab rats' whom they kept in in a climate of readiness, responding to the psychological triggers that would assure their continued involvement in whatever project the leaders desired, no longer have this constant reinforcement. Some of the minds have gradually stopped suppression of their past experiences. So it is with Cheryl, and now her sister Lynn.
”
”
Cheryl Hersha (Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country)
“
The percentage of people reporting contact with the dead in surveys ranges anywhere from 42 to 72 percent. Widows having contact with their deceased husbands can go as high as 92 percent.1 If the surveys had included children and deathbed encounters, which are extremely common, the percentages would have been even heftier. A whopping 75 percent of parents who lost a child had an encounter within a year of the child’s death.2 But a sad 75 percent of all those who had encounters reported not mentioning them to anyone for fear of ridicule.3 It’s hard to believe that a society can deny the validity of an experience shared by so large a proportion of its population. But we do. Many organized and not-so-organized religions go so far as to condemn communication with the dead, a position that at least admits contact is possible. Until recently, near-death experiencers have suffered great distress from disbelief and derision, silenced by those
”
”
Julia Assante (The Last Frontier: Exploring the Afterlife and Transforming Our Fear of Death)
“
The percentage of people reporting contact with the dead in surveys ranges anywhere from 42 to 72 percent. Widows having contact with their deceased husbands can go as high as 92 percent.1 If the surveys had included children and deathbed encounters, which are extremely common, the percentages would have been even heftier. A whopping 75 percent of parents who lost a child had an encounter within a year of the child’s death.2 But a sad 75 percent of all those who had encounters reported not mentioning them to anyone for fear of ridicule.3 It’s hard to believe that a society can deny the validity of an experience shared by so large a proportion of its population. But we do. Many organized and not-so-organized religions go so far as to condemn communication with the dead, a position that at least admits contact is possible. Until recently, near-death experiencers have suffered great distress from disbelief and derision, silenced by those they were expected to trust most, their families and physicians. The same holds for people on the verge of death, since the phenomena they typically experience, such as visits from the dead and visions of the other side, are treated as symptoms of dementia. All these people are between a rock and a hard place.
”
”
Julia Assante (The Last Frontier: Exploring the Afterlife and Transforming Our Fear of Death)
“
While the following tragedy may be revolting to read, it must not be forgotten that the existence of it is far more revolting. In Devonshire Place, Lisson Grove, a short while back died an old woman of seventy-five years of age. At the inquest the coroner's officer stated that all he found in the room was a lot of old rags covered with vermin. He had got himself smothered with the vermin. The room was in a shocking condition, and he had never seen anything like it. Everything was absolutely covered with vermin.'
The doctor said: 'He found deceased lying across the fender on her back. She had one garment and her stockings on. The body was quite alive with vermin, and all the clothes in the room were absolutely gray with insects. Deceased was very badly nourished and was very emaciated. She had extensive sores on her legs, and her stockings were adherent to those sores. The sores were the result of vermin. Over her bony chest leaped and rolled hundreds, thousands, myriads of vermin.'
A man present at the inquest wrote; 'I had the evil fortune to see the body of the unfortunate woman as it lay in the mortuary; and even now the memory of that gruesome sight makes me shudder. There she lay in the mortuary shell, so starved and emaciated that she was a mere bundle of skin and bones. Her hair, which was matted with filth, was simply a nest of vermin.
If it is not good for your mother and my mother so to die, then it is not good for this woman, whosoever's mother she might be, so to die.
Bishop Wilkinson, who has lived in Zululand, recently said, 'No headman of an African village would allow such a promiscuous mixing of young men and women, boys and girls.' He had reference to the children of the overcrowded folk, who at five have nothing to learn and much to unlearn which they will never unlearn.
It is notorious that here in the Ghetto the houses of the poor are greater profit earners than the mansions of the rich. Not only does the poor worker have to live like a beast, but he pays proportionately more for it than does the rich man for his spacious comfort. A class of house-sweaters has been made possible by the competition of the poor for houses. There are more people than there is room, and numbers are in the workhouse because they cannot find shelter elsewhere. Not only are houses let, but they are sublet, and sub-sublet down to the very rooms.
”
”
Jack London (The People of the Abyss)
“
Elias Blackwell: Deceased Occupation: Lawyer Aliases: Elias Wollman, Elias Belvedere, Elias Olmsted Most Recent Home: Central Park Role within the 13: Legal Last Sighting: Fifth Avenue Most important, though,
”
”
James Ponti (Blue Moon)
“
Wellington cleared his throat. "Why Miss Braun, I would never have taken you for a bigot." Her mouth dropped open. "Welly, what do you..." She stopped and considered her words, her recent thoughts. Wellington was completely misconstruing this. "I just..." He raised one eyebrow. "Yes, yes, you are, I am afraid, my love. Just because Bettina here is a person of a somewhat deceased nature..." "You do hear yourself, don't you?" "... is a person of a somewhat deceased nature," he repeated, "you are making snap judgements about her. Mrs Marsh has spoken quite highly of Miss Spinnett, and she has performed admirably according to all accounts. In fact, her unique condition has proved remarkably useful at times.
”
”
Pip Ballantine (Operation: Endgame (Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, #6))
“
Billy’s face was enlightened, clean and clear of any worry. The child bloomed with the gift of youth the recently deceased seem to regain, flushed of their mortal shackles.
”
”
Jonathan Dunne (Billy's Experiment)
“
I am not exactly an author recently deceased, but a deceased man recently an author.
”
”
Machado de Assis (Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas)
“
What’s in the mist?” “The souls of the recently deceased.” His arm tightened around me. “They’re waiting to enter the Pillars.
”
”
Jennifer L. Armentrout (A Light in the Flame (Flesh and Fire, #2))
“
tall doorway leading to the so-called weeping chamber apparently had been enlarged at some more recent time: the original doorway was only a third the size and more compatible with biblical descriptions of both John and Mary Magdalene stooping down to look inside. To the right of the doorway was a nephesh, or soul window, through which, according to Jewish tradition, the spirit of the deceased departed after the third day in the tomb.
”
”
Glenn Cooper (The Resurrection Maker)
“
Greyfriars, like other cemeteries, employed occasional night watchmen, but guards were easily bribed and it was not unusual to see families, rich and poor, huddled round the graves of recently deceased relatives waiting for their loved ones to decompose enough to be useless to the anatomists.
”
”
Jan-Andrew Henderson (The Ghost That Haunted Itself: The Story of the Mackenzie Poltergeist - The Infamous Ghoul of Greyfriars Graveyard)
“
Pictures old photographs hang on the wall of loved ones: far away, long since moved or recently deceased. i dread each new picture that joins, the clips and my heart already sagging from the weight of loss. Mac & Cheese gathered around the kitchen counter, we share dinner of macaroni and cheese. we share dinner, my parents and i, as though no time had passed, the same plates holding the noodles as when i was just learning to hold a fork.
”
”
Liv Augusta (Donut Cry For Me)
“
The dead have powers, but the control of the mind, heart and body is assumed by the supernatural aspect of dying,
”
”
Beetlejuice Editions (Handbook for the Recently Deceased: Practical guide with tips, rules and activities in the world of the dead)
“
I debated for a time as to whether I ought to open these memoirs at the beginning or at the end — that is, if I should start out with my birth or with my death. Granting that the common practice may be to begin with one's birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly an author recently deceased, but a deceased man recently an author, for whom the tomb was another cradle; the second is that this would make the writing wittier and more novel.
”
”
Machado de Assis (Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas)
“
expelled from the beyond, because it is issuing orders in the world of the living and this is forbidden.
”
”
Beetlejuice Editions (Handbook for the Recently Deceased: Practical guide with tips, rules and activities in the world of the dead)
“
dead do not have a language as such, they can perform signals or actions with objects mostly, but not express words.
”
”
Beetlejuice Editions (Handbook for the Recently Deceased: Practical guide with tips, rules and activities in the world of the dead)
“
Recently deceased 26-year-old investigative journalist Bre Payton reported at The Federalist on December 13, 2018 that a newly-released DOJ Office of the Inspector General report reveals that Mueller’s Special Counsel Investigation (SCI) Records Officer deleted text messages that Strzok and Page exchanged while working on the Russian Collusion investigation. Deleting government records is a violation of the Federal Records Act. Destruction of evidence is also considered a crime. “The 11-page report reveals that almost a month after Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team, his government-issued iPhone was wiped clean and restored to factory settings by another individual working in Mueller’s office” Payton reported.
”
”
Mary Fanning (THE HAMMER is the Key to the Coup "The Political Crime of the Century": How Obama, Brennan, Clapper, and the CIA spied on President Trump, General Flynn ... and everyone else)
“
Once or twice, Suzanne happened to mention the work of the recently deceased Alfred Sisley, and henceforward, the painter became Maurice’s obsession and his idol.
”
”
Catherine Hewitt (Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon)
“
As legislators struggled to keep up with social mobility and new fashion trends, the rules took on a frenzied character: almost every aspect of attire was a potential target for legal strictures. Genoa banned the use of sable trims in 1157. In 1249 Siena restricted the length of trains on women’s dresses. In 1258 Alfonso X of Castile reserved scarlet cloaks for the king and silk for the nobility. The papal legate of the Romagna, in 1279, required all women in the region to wear veils; by contrast, Lucca in 1337 outlawed veils, hoods, and cloaks for all women other than nuns. A Florentine law of 1322 forbade women other than widows from wearing black. In 1375 in Aquila, only male relatives of the recently deceased were allowed to go unshaven and grow
”
”
Richard Thompson Ford (Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History)
“
What would you put on a billboard? “‘YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!’” [TF: CAPS are his.] Shay constantly reminds himself of the shortness of life and inevitability of death. I also build memento mori (reminders of death) into my schedule, whether reading Seneca and other stoicism, spending time with hospice caretakers, visiting graveyards (e.g., Omaha Beach), or placing the memoirs of the recently deceased cover-out in my living room.
”
”
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
This is why I love the field of transplant. Since I began taking care of sick people, I have noticed that one of the hardest things about getting sick, really sick, is that you are separated from the people you love. Even when families are dedicated to the patient, illness separates the well from the sick. The sick suffer alone, they undergo procedures and surgeries alone, and in the end, they die alone. Transplant is different. Transplant is all about having someone else join you in your illness. It may be in the form of an organ from a recently deceased donor, a selfless gift given by someone who has never met you, or a kidney or liver from a relative, friend, or acquaintance. In every case, someone is saying, in effect, “Let me join you in your recovery, your suffering, your fear of the unknown, your desire to become healthy, to get your life back. Let me bear some of your risk with you.
”
”
Joshua D. Mezrich (When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon)
“
A book that took 57 years to write. That's right 57 years. It was started by my deceased Dad and recently finished by myself.
”
”
Charlie Bernstein
“
A Christian statesmen serving the Ottoman Empire in 1852 would have had a number of reasons to invoke the career of the Duke of Wellington. The recently deceased Wellington was an Anglo-Irish and yet rose from that disadvantaged background to become a military and diplomatic leader defending the British Empire in India and against Napoleon. Representing Britain at the Congress of Vienna, Wellington was conservative in a time of changes and challenges for England and for the European system of politics. Wellington had apparently managed to reconcile the contradictions and challenges of his position and earn a shining reputation in life and in death as a defender of the British Empire. Stephanos Vogorides, the Ottoman Christian statesman who invokes Wellington here, was almost an exact contemporary of his. [...]. He encountered perhaps even more profound challenges than Wellington, struggling to no avail to reconcile his position as an Orthodox Christian serving not the Russian or even Greek state but the Ottoman state, in the midst of the conflicts growing more intense by the day in the early 1850s.
”
”
Christine M. Philliou (Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution)
“
or lines of people led by a man with an umbrella celebrating the life of a person recently deceased. Every day was unique — a treasure.
”
”
Nancy Smith Gibson (The New Witch)
“
For decades the prevailing theory of memory was that all of a person’s experiences were engraved on sheets of gold foil; it was these sheets, torn apart by the force of the blast, that were the source of the tiny flakes found after accidents. Anatomists would collect the bits of gold leaf—so thin that light passes greenly through them—and spend years trying to reconstruct the original sheets, with the hope of eventually deciphering the symbols in which the deceased’s recent experiences were inscribed.
”
”
Ted Chiang (Exhalation)
“
According to John Mbiti, Kiswahili speakers divide the deceased into two categories: sasha and zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live on in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalized ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered…. But they are not living-dead. There is a difference.
”
”
Colin Dickey (Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places)
“
drew primarily on the ideas of their contemporary Andrew Jackson Davis, who in turn derived them from the eighteenth-century philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg—or from conversations, as Davis claimed, with Swedenborg’s spirit. Davis had already produced an astonishing body of lectures and books developing what he came to call a “harmonial philosophy” in which like attracted like. So great were the similarities and affinities between beings of both worlds, Davis had written, that the recently deceased often failed even to recognize that they had died. Naturally, they felt a profound attachment to the mortals they had left behind.8
”
”
Barbara Weisberg (Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism)
“
Thursday: Was shown co-op apartment of recently deceased actor. By now so seasoned that I didn’t bat an eye at the sink in the master bedroom.
”
”
Fran Lebowitz (The Fran Lebowitz Reader)
“
Does Kurokawa feel that deep-time thinking in business is better than short-term thinking? He is an even-minded person, and I admit that I expected him to reply that both are important. Instead he said, "Of course."
He offered one more history lesson: in 1915, Tokyo decided to commemorate their recently deceased emperor with a Shinto shrine and sacred forest. At the time, the area they selected was marshy farmland on the outskirts of the city.
The forester planned out the project in stages, beginning with a hundred thousand young trees that would be planted around the few existing pines. Over a hundred years, a broad-leaf woods of oak, chinquapin and camphor trees would rise to become an untended forest. No one involved in the planning would live to see the final outcome.
Today the mature forest covers a slow-rising hill alongside Harajuku subway station. It's a green respite, where a sense of calm prevails and there's clean air for your lungs-and it is surrounded to the horizon on every side by the megalopolis of Toyko. Kurokawa became speechless with awe at the brilliance of the deep-time vision.
'If you don't think that way,' he said at last, 'what kind of passion do you have for human life?
”
”
J.B. MacKinnon (The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves)