I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice.
It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself.
People ask me what makes a good funeral, and I tell them the most important thing is your man in the casket. If you have a man of substance in there, you have the makings of a first-class funeral.
A funeral is for those left behind. Sometimes, one wonders if the weeping is more out of fear for ourselves than it is sympathy for the deceased.
That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses. "Save them for my funeral," I'd said.
What am I most ashamed of in my life? Not keeping my promise to my sister and being too scared of America to attend her funeral.
Success is a public affair. Failure is a private funeral.
I've been to many funerals of funny people, and they're some of the funniest days you'll ever have, because the emotions run high.
I want them to play Britney Spears at my funeral. This way I won't feel so bad about being dead, and everyone there will know there is something worse than Death.
The archiving industry, much like the funeral industry and the wedding industry, these industries can be very exploitative.
A psychiatrist once told me early in treatment, "Stop trying to make me like you," and what a sobering and welcome smack in the face that statement was. Yet somehow, every day of my life is still a campaign for popularity, or better yet, a crowded funeral.
The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.
You can't choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.
You broke me bodily. The heart ain't the half of it, And I'll never learn to laugh at it In my good natured way. In fact, I'm laughing less in general, But I learned a lot at my own funeral. And I knew you'd be the death of me, So I guess that's the price I pay.
I remember in 'Pride and Prejudice' I had to do a scene where I broke down. And before we filmed I spent like three hours imagining my mum's funeral. Actually, she's very much alive, happy and healthy. It was really horrible.
I wanted to be at my sister's funeral, but my family has always had a complicated dynamic.
I'm not allergic to fashion. I'm just one of those people who when they put on a suit look like they're going to a funeral or to court.
Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love.
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound.
A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.