Morgue Quotes

“The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale green sheet covered his inert body but not his head, which lay (eyes closed, mouth set in a tense and terrible grimace) unmoving. Gianluca. Barely able to see, barely able to stand - my knees kept buckling – and breathing so quietly I thought that I, too, might die; that out of shock, I would just drift away, the shell of my body cracking open. No longer anchored by my brother’s love, I would be reabsorbed by sky. Gianluca. If there was never another sound in the world, I would understand – yes, that would be appropriate, it would be fitting. This was the antithesis of music, the antithesis of noise. My brother’s death seemed to demand silence of all the world. Gianluca.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Eclipse: A Memoir of Suicide

“Lest we forget, a morgue is also a community center.”
― Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother

“One of the reasons I love Murder is that victims are, as a general rule, dead... I don't make a habit of sharing this, in case people take me fore a sicko or- worse-a wimp, but give me a dead child, any day, over a child sobbing his heart out while you make him tell you what the bad man did next. Dead victims don't show up outside HQ to beg for answers, you never have to nudge them into reliving every hideous moment, and you never have to worry, and you never have to worry about what it'll do to their lives if you fuck up. They stay put in the morgue, light-years beyond anything I can do right or wrong, and leave me free to focus on the people who sent them there.”
― Tana French, Broken Harbour

“I wanted to write an adventure story, not, it's true, I really did. I shall have failed, that's all. Adventures bore me. I have no idea how to talk about countries, how to make people wish they had been there. I am not a good travelling salesman. Countries? Where are they , whatever became of them.
When I was twelve I dreamed of Hongkong. That tedious, commonplace little provincial town! Shops sprouting from every nook and cranny! The Chinese junks pictured on the lids of chocolate boxes used to fascinate me. Junks: sort of chopped-off barges, where the housewives do all their cooking and washing on deck. They even have television. As for the Niagara Falls: water, nothing but water! A dam is more interesting; at least one can occasionally see a big crack at its base, and hope for some excitement.
When one travels, one sees nothing but hotels. Squalid rooms, with iron bedsteads, and a picture of some kind hanging on the wall from a rusty nail, a coloured print of London Bridge or the Eiffel Tower.
One also sees trains, lots of trains, and airports that look like restaurants, and restaurants that look like morgues. All the ports in the world are hemmed in by oil slicks and shabby customs buildings. In the streets of the towns, people keep to the sidewalks, cars stop at red lights. If only one occasionally arrived in a country where women are the colour of steel and men wear owls on their heads. But no, they are sensible, they all have black ties, partings to one side, brassières and stiletto heels. In all the restaurants, when one has finished eating one calls over the individual who has been prowling among the tables, and pays him with a promissory note. There are cigarettes everywhere! There are airplanes and automobiles everywhere.”
― J.M.G. Le Clézio, The Book of Flights

“The morgue is a Victorian update of a system established by Alfred the Great. It's the place where certain deaths are resolved - those where the cause is unclear or is the result of some intended or accidental violence. The bodies are almost always victims in some way - of crime, suicides and car crashes, but also victims of loneliness. It's where you go if you die alone in your flat and your body lies undisturbed for days. It's where you go if no one knew you were dying and no GP attended your final hours. It's where you go if no loved one held your hand as you slipped away. In one way or another, then, all the people who pass through this room are the people who die screaming.”
― Stephen Armstrong

“To the family of a victim of a fatal accident, the deceased was at the wrong place at the wrong time. To the family of the morgue owner, the deceased was at the right place at the right time.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most people are not really scared of death. They are merely terrified of being taken to a mortuary and/or being buried or cremated and/or being forgotten.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“From "Lady In Waiting" in the anthology The Morgue :

Now I have yet to meet the corpse could hold up its end of a conversation, so at most I might whistle while fixin’ one up ‘stead of engagin’ myself in any small talk that’s goin’ to be so one-sided anyways. But Cindy Flowers’ corpse weren’t no ordinary body when it walked upright, and it sure weren’t ordinary just because it was lyin’ before me in a pine wood box. So for the first time I felt the need to get a few things said to one of our visitors, and I leaned down to get myself real close to her face. Her eyes was closed ‘cause Pa had already sewed her lids shut.”
― Ken Goldman, The Morgue: An Anthology

“This is the place where death rejoices to help those who live. It's written somewhere in every morgue I've ever been in. Nice way of looking at it, isn't it?”
― Jane Casey, The Last Girl

“Anfiteatro" llaman aquí a la morgue, y no hay taxista en Medellín ni cristiano que no sepa dónde está porque aquí los vivos sabemos muy bien ádonde tenemos que ir a buscar los muertos.”
― Fernando Vallejo, La virgen de los sicarios

“Grow a backbone. Stand up. Sharpen your claws. Retaliate against the monsters. Slay the dragons. Stand up for Morgue and yourself.”
― Joe Dixon, Take Them to the Morgue

“Many people detest Morgue. His most persistent enemies are conservatives and evangelical Christians. He makes their flesh crawl. He is everything they hate. They are intent on destroying him. They will succeed if his supporters do not do their duty and stand up for him against the trolls and saboteurs. This isn’t a game. This isn’t a drill. This is your life. What are you going to do with it?”
― Joe Dixon, Take Them to the Morgue

“And Lars thought of himself. Of the vast, gaping cave within him, black like pitch. Dark like the morgue beneath Monson's department store. Windowless and secret and clammy and ignored.[...] And Lars' stomach churned, wretched ill, because for the first time he realized he was filled throat to gut with formaldehyde. Mildred said he was the undertaker, but that wasn't true.
He was the morgue.”
― Allie Ray, Inheritance

“The leader of Hyperianism never mentions Illuminism. Not ever. And that’s because, if he ever did, he would be exposed as a messenger for others rather than the Savior he wants to pose as. His own narcissism and Messiah Complex have destroyed him because they have made him constantly lie about the fundamental basis of Hyperianism. His egotism forbade him from accepting the role he was supposed to have – that of messenger. He didn’t have his own message; he was delivering the message of others. That’s the blunt fact of it. There is nobility and worth in the messenger role, but the leader of Hyperianism wasn’t satisfied. He was compelled to present himself as the Main Man. He never was, and never will be.”
― David Sinclair, Without the Mob, There Is No Circus

“There’s been a shocking lack of dead bodies.”
― Byrd Nash, Delicious Death

“The Basement Morgue by Stewart Stafford

A reluctant errand to a basement morgue,
No mortal knew what things lurked there,
The elevator shuddered to a halt, opening,
To a scattered boneyard of patient beds.

Totem tchotchkes of a broken system,
Dead corridors stretched left and right,
A charged cold-sweat silence hung,
As a flaccid desk stethoscope rattled.

Buried my nose in my clipboard;
Had to find their machine - now!
A gurney wheeled itself past me,
Disappearing into an anteroom.

A hanging skeleton lunged at me—
Spindly fingers choked me into blackness.
Rousing to bright lights, blinding me;
Icy steel drawers swallowed my screams.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford