This is my final day at The News-Herald and, consequently, this is my last post for the Book Blog. (I could make some jokes about going to South Beach, but Decision parodies have not been funny since Steve Carell took his talents to Outback Steak House.)

The blog is bigger than one person and it will thrive without me. (It will, at very least, be more coherent.)

But I did want to have a final game with my friends and coworkers before I leave. Each person has picked one literary quote they would like as their epitaph. (See, it’s a theme... death... departure... Steve Carell.)

Now, for what everyone wanted on their tombstones:

Jacob Lammers
The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away. I wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart.
-William Golding

Cassandra Shofar
She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.
-Jonathan Safran Foer

Michael Butz
We accept the love we think we deserve.
-Stephen Chbosky

Cheryl Sadler
Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.
-Wally Lamb
(How could I not pair those two quotes?)

Tracey Read
Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.
-Groucho Marx

John Bertosa
I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
-J.R. Tolkien

Dave Jones
Mind, mind, mind:
Itself a capable vibration
Thrumming from here to there
In the cloven brainflesh
Contained in its helmet of bone—
Like an electronic boxful
Of channels and filaments
Bundled inside its case,
A little musical robot--
-Robert Pinsky “Last Robot Song

Jason Lea
Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.
-Jules Renard

Danielle Capriato
After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
-J.K. Rowling

Sandy Klepach
It is Sandy, he said. For there she was.
-Virginia Woolf, just a tad adjusted

Jamie Ward
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
-Ernest Hemingway

-Jason Lea, JasonMarkLea@yahoo.com

P.S. Thank you for reading. Writers do not matter without readers, but readers will always matter.