Kathy Benjamin > Quotes

“THE IDEA IS TO DIE YOUNG AS LATE AS POSSIBLE.
ASHLEY MONTAGU, ANTHROPOLOGIST (DIED 1999)”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever

“it can be argued that humans started becoming human the first time they added items to a grave for no other reason than so the corpse, or at least their spirit, would still have access to those things. While there is evidence that some prehuman prodigies may have started adding a flint knife or two to graves as many as 320,000 years ago, it was only about 100,000 years ago that ritual burial really took off. Once humans developed language they could explain their ideas about life and death to others, and one tribe could then explain those beliefs to other people as well.”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever

“THEY SAY SUCH NICE THINGS ABOUT PEOPLE AT THEIR FUNERALS THAT IT MAKES ME SAD TO REALIZE THAT I’M GOING TO MISS MINE BY JUST A FEW DAYS.
GARRISON KEILLOR, AUTHOR AND RADIO PERSONALITY”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever

“DEATH IS NOT THE END. THERE REMAINS THE LITIGATION OVER THE ESTATE.
AMBROSE BIERCE, WRITER (DIED 1913)”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever

“ACCORDING TO MOST STUDIES, PEOPLE’S NUMBER ONE FEAR IS PUBLIC SPEAKING. NUMBER TWO IS DEATH… . THIS MEANS TO THE AVERAGE PERSON, IF YOU GO TO A FUNERAL, YOU’RE BETTER OFF IN THE CASKET THAN DOING THE EULOGY.
JERRY SEINFELD, COMEDIAN”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever

“Some people have gone to great lengths to find out, but others take the easier way and have a funeral of sorts before their (last) big day. The most famous living funeral was that of Morrie Schwartz, the real-life protagonist of Tuesdays with Morrie, a book short enough that thousands of people actually read it and then sobbed over the beauty of celebrating a person’s life before he or she died. Of course, living funerals have a variety of benefits over “dead” funerals, namely because you can kiss and hug the guest of honor and no one will call the police. Living funerals have become especially popular in Taiwan, which is a huge swing from just a couple generations ago, when even saying a word that sort of sounded like the word death was considered bad luck. Now people turn out in droves to attend the living funerals of the terminally ill. One twenty-five-year-old man even invited the doctors and medical students who would be getting his body after he died to his living funeral, which must have made for some awkward conversations. One problem with living funerals is the tricky issue of timing. Ideally one would be held when the guest of honor was still well enough to enjoy it, but with some it’s hard to know how accurate the doctor’s estimates are about how long someone has. An eighty-five-year-old cardinal threw himself one in 2007 and two years later was still going strong. Still, no one was probably complaining, considering the alternative.”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever

“I DO NOT FEAR DEATH. I HAD BEEN DEAD FOR BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF YEARS BEFORE I WAS BORN, AND HAD NOT SUFFERED THE SLIGHTEST INCONVENIENCE FROM IT.
MARK TWAIN, AUTHOR (DIED 1910)”
― Kathy Benjamin, Funerals to Die For: The Craziest, Creepiest, and Most Bizarre Funeral Traditions and Practices Ever