1 year ago
76 We each cognize that penning is hard work. Trying to find the cleanable words to make a lasting enactment of creation tin beryllium a maddening process. Remember however hard it was to prime your yearbook quote? It was a reflection of wherever you were successful your beingness astatine the time, and it seemed truthful perfect. And present forever, nether your elder picture, it volition say, “A licky boom-boom down” from Snow’s Informer. Because it’s often hard to prime the close words! Now ideate they’re going connected your headstone. That’s forever-forever. But galore authors person chosen (or had chosen) immoderate truly large words for their last resting places. That’s wherefore we’ve rounded up 12 of the champion writer epitaphs.
An epitaph is simply a portion of penning utilized connected a headstone oregon monument to memorialize someone. (Not to beryllium confused with epigraph, which is simply a quotation utilized to present a portion of writing, similar astatine the opening of a book.) Despite the information that authors are virtually known for utilizing words, it’s astonishing however galore person headstones without an epitaph. Like, Ernest Hemingway, really? He seemed to bloviate connected and on, yet his headstone contains lone his sanction and dates. Or Douglas Adams, helium has specified a elemental headstone, it makes you privation to cry. (There isn’t adjacent an illustration. There’s nary towel, nary fish, nary Cosmic Cutie.) But determination are plentifulness of astonishing writer epitaphs to take from. Some are serious, immoderate are silly, and immoderate are poignant. And these 12 are immoderate of the best!
Margaret Wise Brown (1910-1952)
“Writer of songs and nonsense.” This is fitting, though sad, arsenic Brown met her extremity erstwhile she was performing a precocious footwear aft country to amusement radical she was feeling well. The question dislodged a humor clot and killed her.
Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006)
Butler, the award-winning writer of groundbreaking subject fiction, has a gorgeous onyx sedate marker with an etched illustration. The inscription reads, “All that you touch, you change. All that you change, Changes you. The lone lasting information is Change. God is Change.” It’s from her caller Parable of the Sower.
Willa Cather (1873-1947)
“That is happiness; to beryllium dissolved into thing implicit and great.” This punctuation from Cather’s arguably astir celebrated work, My Ántonia, is cleanable and would person kept being cleanable if the epitaph included the adjacent line: “When it comes to one, it comes arsenic people arsenic sleep.”
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Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)
“I care. I attraction astir it all. It takes excessively overmuch vigor not to care. The wherefore of wherefore we are present is an intrigue for adolescents. The however is what indispensable bid the surviving which is wherefore I person lately go an insurgent again.” What a beauteous sentiment; what a tragically abbreviated life.
Langston Hughes is portion of the spiritual halfway of the #SchomburgCenter. His ashes are interred beneath the Cosmogram successful Langston Hughes Lobby and the words of his archetypal published poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," adorn the lobby’s nationalist creation installation, Rivers. pic.twitter.com/XrBWzQ86q0
— SchomburgCenter (@SchomburgCenter) February 1, 2020
Langston Hughes (1901-1967)
The ashes of the Harlem Renaissance writer reside nether the level of the Schomburg Center for Research successful Black Culture successful Harlem. The spot is marked with a memorial featuring his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which includes the beauteous enactment “My psyche has grown heavy similar the rivers.”
Spike Milligan (1918-2022)
“Dúirt mé leat spell raibh mé breoite.” It’s Irish for “I told you I was ill.” Milligan was a writer and instrumentalist of verse overmuch successful the benignant of Ogden Nash and Edward Lear. And his epitaph shows helium was silly to the end.
Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957)
The epitaph connected the Chilen poet’s sedate marker reads, “Lo que el alma hace por su cuerpo es lo que el artista hace por su pueblo.” Which translated means, “What the psyche is to the body, truthful is the creator to his people.” Art matters, y’all.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
“Excuse my dust.” The acerbic Queen of the Quip wished to beryllium cremated erstwhile she died, making her epitaph the explanation of “it’s comic due to the fact that it’s true.”
She has since gotten a caller gravestone that reads, “Leave for her a reddish young rose, Go your mode and prevention your pity, She is blessed for she knows, That her particulate is precise pretty,” which is from her poem “Epitaph For A Darling Lady.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
“Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.” Some authors person lines from their astir celebrated works connected their headstones. For instance, there’s a enactment from The Great Gatsby connected F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s sedate marker. One has to wonderment if they chose it for themselves; possibly Poe was sick and bushed of radical saying, “nevermore” to him. True oregon not, helium is stuck with it…forevermore.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
“rose, o axenic contradiction, tendency to beryllium nary one’s slumber beneath truthful galore lids.” Rilke wrote these words himself. They look doubly fitting erstwhile you larn helium died from an corruption helium got aft pricking himself with a thorn portion picking roses.
Billy Wilder (1906-2022)
“I’m a writer but past nobody’s perfect.” Wilder didn’t constitute novels oregon poetry, but helium was celebrated for his scripts and screenplays, and an Academy Award-winning director. This epitaph is conscionable excessively cleanable and comic not to include.
August Wilson (1945-2005)
“Wherever you are you are. I’m here.” This epitaph is some comic and heart-squeezing. Here is Wilson, now, forever. It’s elemental and beautiful.
Honorary mentions: The headstone of Gwendolyn Brooks is shaped similar a book, with the titles of her works connected the spine. The headstone of Nella Larsen, writer of Passing, is etched with a publication and reads “A Novelist Remembered.” — which is bully and succinct. And Herman Melville’s headstone has a scroll carved into the beforehand that reads…nothing. It’s blank, which truly feels similar a connection successful itself.
As for myself, I americium not definite what I privation my epitaph to say. There astir apt won’t beryllium immoderate country for one, aft they decorativeness carving “Killed by a falling stack of books: we told her to beryllium careful.” And arsenic the headstone of Mel Blanc says, “That’s each folks.”
