Karin Fossum

We're not really afraid to die.  We're only afraid of being forgotten. 

We know that we'll be forgotten, and the idea is unbearable, don't you agree?  As time passes we become infrequent visitors in the minds of those left behind.  The ones who clear out the house and divide up the belongings. Throw away the rubbish.  And forget.  

If we knew that every evening someone lit a candle and sat down to think – thought about us, if only for a few seconds – then we could depart this earth in peace. 

(From her 1998 novel, When the Devil Holds the Candle, which was published in the United States in 2007.)