People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad. – Marcel Proust
Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident – It is as common as life. – Henry David Thoreau, 11 March 1842, letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin