“And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions. There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men - all dead. Their bones repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?”
Severian, Journeyman of the Seekers of Truth and Penitence (Guild of the Torturers) - from Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
- interesting thoughts from a man living at a time when our sun has nearly burnt out. I often wonder myself if the dead watch over us and in what could they really have any interest in. It is disheartening to think that the dead are completely apathetic to the events of our lives; but surely the dead are not anxiously awaiting the release of the new iPhone.
