I could just remember that my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead for a long time.
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, 1930
nickkahler reblogged
When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.
Jorge Luis Borges, "On Death," c. 1970 (via withaview)
nickkahler reblogged
There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
David Eagleman, "Metamorphosis" from Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, 2009 (via misterchu)
Freyja receives the slain heroes of the battlefield quite respectfully as Óðinn does. Her house is called Sessrumnir, 'filled with many seats', and it probably fills the same function as Valhöll, 'the hall of the slain', where the warriors eat and drink beer after the fighting. Still, we must ask why there are two heroic paradises in the Old Norse View of afterlife. It might possibly be a consequence of different forms of initiation of warriors, where one part seemed to have belonged to Óðinn and the other to Freyja. These examples indicate that Freyja was a war-goddess, and she even appears as a valkyrie, literally 'the one who chooses the slain.'
Britt-Mari Näsström, "On Folkvangr," 1999