A.

“the violence intensified, grandiose funerals became routine, with rousing graveside orations and caskets draped in tricolor flags. People took to joking that there was no social life in Belfast anymore, apart from wakes.”
― Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

“Dating back to the Iliad, ancient Egypt and beyond, burial rites have formed a critical function in most human societies. Whether we cremate a loved one or inter her bones, humans possess a deep-set instinct to mark death in some deliberate, ceremonial fashion. Perhaps the cruelest feature of forced disappearance as an instrument of war is that it denies the bereaved any such closure, relegating them to a permanent limbo of uncertainty.”
― Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

“That is why I came back. I was wrong in life, limited, shrank everything down to my size, and yet, in the end, there was something light-craving within me, which sent me back, and saved me.”
― George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation

“I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.”
― Rick Moody