Memorial Service Quotes

• Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.

  Harold MacMillan

  Fear, Party, Life And Death

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• There are certain people in our popular culture that just capture people's imaginations. And in death, they become even larger. Now, I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable.

  Barack Obama

  Media, People, Imagination

  "Michael Jackson's family has private service". www.hollywoodreporter.com. July 7, 2009.

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• Mr. Franzen said he and Mr. Wallace, over years of letters and conversations about the ethical role of the novelist, had come to the joint conclusion that the purpose of writing fiction was “a way out of loneliness.” (NY Times article on the memorial service of David Foster Wallace.)

  Jonathan Franzen

  Loneliness, Writing, Years

  4 Copy quote

• I don't want to spend a fortune on my cremation urn, but I really do want to look nice at my memorial service.

  Lynn Flewelling

  Nice, Memorial, Looks

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• The decision to rely heavily on high-altitude air power, target urban infrastructure and repeatedly attack heavily populated towns and villages has reflected a deliberate trade-off of the lives of American pilots and soldiers, not with those of their declared Taliban enemies, but with Afghan civilians... There will be no official two-minute silence for the Afghan dead, no newspaper obituaries or memorial services attended by the prime minister, as there were for the victims of the twin towers.

  Seumas Milne

  Air, Two, Silence

  " The innocent dead in a coward's war" by Seumas Milne, www.theguardian.com. December 19, 2001.

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• These days, when people are alone, or feel a moment of boredom, they tend to reach for a device. In a movie theater, at a stop sign, at the checkout line at a supermarket and, yes, at a memorial service, reaching for a device becomes so natural that we start to forget that there is a reason, a good reason, to sit still with our thoughts: It does honor to what we are thinking about. It does honor to ourselves.

  Sherry Turkle

  Thinking, People, Boredom

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• A woman I loved [Andi Parhamovich] was killed in Baghdad in January 2007 – al-Qaeda in Iraq took credit for it … The memorial service with me crying over an empty coffin.

  Michael Hastings

  Iraq, Memorial, Baghdad

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• Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?

  Anne Tyler

  Memorial, Comfort

  Anne Tyler, Monica McInerney (2012). “The Beach Book Bundle: 3 Novels for Summer Reading: Breathing Lessons, The Alphabet Sisters, Firefly Summer”, p.84, Ballantine Books

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• A president cant go to every memorial service.

  Nancy Gibbs

  Memorial, President, Cant

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