The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

 

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.
--
Edward Thomas, "Early One Morning" from Poems (1917)

 

Cyril Connolly

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Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.

 

Frank Zappa

 

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

 

Kurt Vonnegut

 

We are closest to life when we are vying with death ... The blood runs hot, the air smells sweet, the sky becomes an unbearably beautiful blue. Battle is intoxicating. That is why the ghastly vileness of war has always been so popular.

 

David Gemmell

 

I don't believe pumpkin pie is even made from pumpkin. I mean, how can something that smells that shitty make a pie so sweet? There's not enough sugar in the universe.

 

Lewis Black

 

The rose of all the world is not for me.
I want for my part
Only the little white rose of Scotland
That smells sharp and sweet - and breaks the heart.

 

Hugh MacDiarmid