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5a77e9f Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. grief loss revelation John Green
c7f2430 If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is. laughter loss sacrifice isolation flame Charles Bukowski
633fd24 The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before. loss memory John Green
1dd12b8 If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone? loss sisters Jodi Picoult
2a01295 It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone. loss John Steinbeck
542150b When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time--the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes--when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever--there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. grief loss John Irving
d414473 Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. loss life love Haruki Murakami
953434b Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. loss Haruki Murakami
0c2c5b8 We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss. loss fear hope life love the-infernal-devices jem-carstairs shadowhunters memory Cassandra Clare
7551862 "At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it." -- loss Arthur Golden
8f62517 No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it loss inspirational-quotes ownership Paulo Coelho
29500c4 It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away. loss life Elizabeth Gilbert
6d1b6a0 Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. mourning words grief loss sorrow sadness William Shakespeare
e1d2979 Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one. understanding loss god purpose Dean Koontz
c7e2728 You never knew the last time you were seeing someone. You didn't know when the last argument happened, or the last time you had sex, or the last time you looked into their eyes and thanked God they were in your life. After they were gone? That was all you thought about. Day and night. loss love shit-happens suck-it-up J.R. Ward
b8ae8bd She took a step and didn't want to take any more, but she did. moving-on loss stepping moving Markus Zusak
07f239e In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child. mourning loss inadequacy-of-words lose english language parent Jodi Picoult
c975a16 Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. fish earth man loss nature world wonder past parable brooks glens environment trout mystery destruction creation maps Cormac McCarthy
1549bfe "Issac:"I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters." Computer: "I don't understand-" Issac: "Me neither. Pause" loss sadness John Green
6289488 But she wasn't around, and that's the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone. loss death back-up death-of-a-loved-one parents fight dying Mitch Albom
325c974 How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury? mourning loss death heart love casket funeral Jodi Picoult
48a5956 My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today. grief loss Richard Adams
c639593 Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came. loss sadness L.M. Montgomery
2fe6d8a No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me. mourning loneliness grief loss fear restlessness C.S. Lewis
09b6314 "For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time." grief loss faith stillbirth grieving C.S. Lewis
c6c7df5 So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it. loss relationships fiction life love epiphany journey Margaret George
92d10c0 She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?' 'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for. loss magic witchcraft Terry Pratchett
675783f Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. loss love despair Andrew Solomon
7c7ca66 Remembering. Forgetting. I'm not sure which is worse. pain loss love Kelley Armstrong
5e0dbd6 To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. loss craving lack wish shadow need wholeness longing foreshadowing Marilynne Robinson
0bb3abe It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she's gone. She's gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it's all I can do. grief loss love tris tobias Veronica Roth
e9b679e Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people. loss life Orson Scott Card
672631a She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they'd loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? lovers loss love Margaret Atwood
5b65ccd The fear of loss . . . it can destroy you as much as the loss itself. loss fear Sarah J. Maas
ab0497a She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky. My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world. loss sadness love Nicole Krauss
217f705 Hearing him talk about his mother, about his intact family, makes my chest hurt for a second, like someone pierced it with a needle. pain grief loss sadness love missing-someone Veronica Roth
217e0ae If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't? loss love jodi-picoult plain-truth wish remember sad memory Jodi Picoult
4730e5b What you are to do without me I cannot imagine. loss love leaving George Bernard Shaw
e77830d I knew that somewhere God was laughing. He had taken the other half of my heart, the one person who knew me better than I knew myself, and He had done what nothing else could do. By bringing us together, He had set into motion the one thing that could tear us apart. loss Jodi Picoult
806a562 Only after disaster can we be resurrected. loss life resurrection Chuck Palahniuk
2caeb25 The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. pain loss risk love saftey security practice force hurt Bell Hooks
c447ee7 The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss. loss letting-go Rebecca Solnit
e6e8f37 My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. grief loss faith stillbirth grieving C.S. Lewis
646f12a And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. 'I can care for myself, please,' and she set about getting some food. They watched her closely. In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, and an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. She was eighteen. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn't seem to care. 'You're all right?' her mother asked. Buttercup sipped her cocoa. 'Fine,' she said. 'You're sure?' her father wondered. 'Yes,' Buttercup replied. There was a very long pause. 'But I must never love again.' She never did. loss love William Goldman
c5cb45a I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it. loss Jodi Picoult
4043a57 "I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed." loss Ursula K. Le Guin
a0bfb2d You can't go home again loss inspirational leaving return home Thomas Wolfe
5a98c6b When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life... it's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself. loss inspirational Patrick Swayze
283e857 You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss. loss numbness Douglas Coupland
0473c38 The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking. grief loss James Patterson
6f1daa4 I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing down and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was reproof. Shouldn't I feel better than I had in the dead of night. grief loss sorrow sadness sad Francine Prose
86fdc0c He remembered Tessa weeping in his arms in Paris, and thinking that he had never known the loss she felt, because he had never loved like she had, and that he was afraid that someday he would, and like Tessa he would lose his mortal love. And that it was better to be the one who died than the one who lived on. He had dismissed that, later, as a morbid fantasy, and had not remembered it again until Alec. loss love page-502 part-2 city-of-heavenly-fire tessa-gray magnus-bane immortal cassandra-clare mortal Cassandra Clare
682b65c "There is nothing to save, now all is lost, loss poems stillness quotes D.H. Lawrence
b73acfd Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103) loss Kate DiCamillo
16ef79a For as much as I hate the cemetery, I've been grateful it's here, too. I miss my wife. It's easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she's never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive. mourning loss death John Scalzi
d97b208 Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house. grief loss faith death stillbirth grieving C.S. Lewis
5f9383d REMEMBER YOUR GREATNES existence giant living-achievement loss struggles suffering suzy-kassem poem courage poetry human achieve beauty confidence strength success life wisdom inspirational winners born great affirmation eye loser egg sperm winner big attitude survivor winning obstacles small competition odds greatness successful birth pains race warrior victory losing fears win Suzy Kassem
008888b I confessed to Tobias, soon after that, that I had lost my entire family. And he assured me that he was my family now. -Tris Prior grief loss love Veronica Roth
410f585 "There is an hour, a minute - you will remember it forever - when you know instinctively on the basis of the most inconsequential evidence, that something is wrong. You don't know - can't know - that it is the first of a series of "wrongful" events that will culminate in the utter devastation of your life as you have known it." grief loss Joyce Carol Oates
f55ea9d There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left. loss inspirational johnny-cash Johnny Cash
46f592c Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent. loneliness loss memories love tessa-gray will-herondale Cassandra Clare
225df05 The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then never again, was so impossible to fathom that of course we kept trying to figure it out, even when we were unconscious. loss Francine Prose
6e650f2 Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon. grief loss Mary Karr
4d73ae9 When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be -- or so it feels-- welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. grief loss religion god C.S. Lewis
aa8e8a4 "I lost a child," she said, meeting Lusa's eyes directly. "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you." loss Barbara Kingsolver
e9f3415 "The two brothers who sought to get their only family back, to feel her warmth, one lost his last family member and the other could never feel warmth again. loss fullmetal-alchemist sad Hiromu Arakawa
95001b2 You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye--and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together. And, no doubt, how you wished you'd had more time. Even if you'd had centuries... When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch--when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had. No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given. time loss love qhuinn carpe-diem forever J.R. Ward
030df7a "No - no - no!" someone was shouting. "No! Fred! No!" And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face." harry-potter loss death so-many-feels fred depressing why j-k-rowling sad J.K. Rowling
a70ccd9 We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations. mourning grief loss immortality sorrow death life-goes-on memory John Banville
cbe18fd And gradually his memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those with so much love attached to them; as if there is an unconscious healing process within the mind which mends up in spite of our desperate determination never to forget. loss memories love Colleen McCullough
6200f55 ...he prayed fundamentally as a gesture of love for what had gone and would go and could be loved in no other way. When he prayed he touched his parents, who could not otherwise be touched, and he touched a feeling that we are all children who lose our parents, all of us, every man and woman and boy and girl, and we too will all be lost by those who come after us and love us, and this loss unites humanity, unites every human being, the temporary nature of our being-ness, and our shared sorrow, the heartache we each carry and yet too often refuse to acknowledge in one another, and out of this Saeed felt it might be possible, in the face of death, to believe in humanity's potential for building a better world, so he prayed as a lament, as a consolation, and as a hope.... mourning grief loss relationships prayer family exit-west mohsin-hamid Mohsin Hamid
6638223 When you meet an extraordinary person, it's like they get inside you, under your ribs, and shuffle everything inside you around until they find space for greatness to grow. But extraordinary people always get away. And when they leave, they take that little part of you with them. Suddenly you find yourself with a gap in your chest that you don't know how to live with. Suddenly you're frightened of being yourself without them. loss Chloe Rattray
5df35db How awful it was, thought Tessa, remembering Fats the toddler, the way tiny ghosts of your living children haunted your heart; they could never know, and would hate it if they did, how their growing was a constant bereavement. loss growing-up memory J.K. Rowling
387b5cb It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly. loss love Jodi Picoult
059a179 one of the best and the most painful things about time traveling has been the opportunity to see my mother alive. loss happiness love time-traveling childhood-memory mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
26ba7b1 You can't just make me different and then leave loss death love driving drunk lost dying John Green
beb7002 ...recognizing that there is more heartbreak in continuous disappointment than a void... loss Emily Giffin
e240c07 Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you're lagging, I may remember him! loss poetry heartbreak love Emily Dickinson
8427b98 Ever since the Christmas of '53, I have felt that the yuletide is a special hell for those families who have suffered any loss or who must admit to any imperfection; the so-called spirit of giving can be as greedy as receiving--Christmas is our time to be aware of what we lack, of who's not home. grief loss John Irving
1523b74 The lost glove is happy. loss melancholy Vladimir Nabokov
2c4fabb [That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken. The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other. loss friendship ender walls separation game Orson Scott Card
431335c He could not construct for the child's pleasure the world he'd lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he. loss parenting Cormac McCarthy
5916a4d I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out. loss happiness love mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
a5d5cd4 I found that the only way I could control this sorrow was not to think of [it] at all, which was almost as painful as the loss itself. grief loss sorrow heartbreak Robin McKinley
1808c64 "I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can't believe I'm here without her."- on losing her best friend" loss Nora Ephron
c3dce08 There will always be a part of you that misses her. You'll see something that reminds you of her and want to tell her about it, only to realize she's not there anymore. Then you'll feel her loss all over again. (Ravyn) You're not helping me, Ravyn. (Jack) I know, buddy. But you will eventually make peace with yourself, and that's the most important thing. Eventually, you'll even be able to smile again when you think about her. (Ravyn) loss death love death-of-a-loved-one missing-someone Sherrilyn Kenyon
47e616d Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry - the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds. marriage loss heartbreak love communicate newlyweds marriage-advice divorce compromise anger communication Gillian Flynn
c232494 You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, ''It happened overnight.'' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing. loss individuality memories change mom-and-pop-stores retail modern-society transience neighborhoods new-york-city consumerism Colson Whitehead
765a021 When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best! loss song entwives longing J.R.R. Tolkien
134d2e1 it is a heartBreaking sound, Amir Jan, the Wailing of a mother. I pray to Allah you Never hear it. loss prayer reality grieving-mother Khaled Hosseini
7c32d21 "Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee--by these angels he hath sent thee-- Respite--respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" Quothe the Raven, "Nevermore." loss Edgar Allan Poe
fbcb661 There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. loss teacher Pat Conroy
f94f88f His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief... Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss. loss life life-and-death grieve nature-of-things Robin Hobb
b386bae On the beach, Roran stood alone, watching them go. Then he threw back his head and uttered a long, aching cry, and the night echoed with the sound of his loss. loss sadness paolini Christopher Paolini
10b5fcb I missed her so much I wanted to die: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater. Lying awake, I tried to recall all my best memories of her--to freeze her in my mind so I wouldn't forget her--but instead of birthdays and happy times I kept remembering things like how a few days before she was killed she'd stopped me halfway out the door to pick a thread off my school jacket. For some reason, it was one of the clearest memories I had of her: her knitted eyebrows, the precise gesture of her reaching out to me, everything. Several times too--drifting uneasily between dreaming and sleep--I sat up suddenly in bed at the sound of her voice speaking clearly in my head, remarks she might conceivably have made at some point but that I didn't actually remember, things like Throw me an apple, would you? and I wonder if this buttons up the front or the back? and This sofa is in a terrible state of disreputableness. loss mother Donna Tartt
9f9d1e5 What I mean to say is, we had been . Had been . Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory. grief loss George Saunders
108a015 The old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy ... a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of 'solving Amy'. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebooks on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings. hatred marriage criticism loss relationships change heartbreak love change-for-worse emotional-turmoil hurtful i-miss-who-you-were missing-who-someone-was puppeteer heartless nothing strangers turmoil bullying scary failure flaws Gillian Flynn
3e1d843 ...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath. loss Audrey Niffenegger
38328c6 In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand. loss religion helplessness Ursula K. Le Guin
8d55568 It takes a year, nephew... a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing someone. grief loss Annie Proulx
581baf1 For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing-the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries. loss needs Marilynne Robinson
b46df7a "The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "--three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "--four." loss Amy Hempel
3d49f83 Now the two of them rode silently toward town, both lost in their own thoughts. Their way took them past the Delgado house. Roland looked up and saw Susan sitting in her window, a bright vision in the gray light of that fall morning. His heart leaped up and although he didn't know it then, it was how he would remember her most clearly forever after- lovely Susan, the girl in the window. So do we pass the ghosts that haunt us later in our lives; they sit undramatically by the roadside like poor beggars, and we see them only from the corners of our eyes, if we see them at all. The idea that they have been waiting there for us rarely if ever crosses our minds. Yet they do wait, and when we have passed, they gather up their bundles of memory and fall in behind, treading in our footsteps and catching up, little by little. loss love Stephen King
7cc4d80 Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river. loss life-lessons Jodi Picoult
34de37f "What did I do to make Mommy leave?" "You didn't do anything. This isn't your fault." "Then why?" she'd wailed. "I don't know," her daddy had said, and he looked so sad. "It isn't fair!" "No, it isn't, baby. Not by a mile. The world's only as fair as you can make it. Takes a lot of fight. A lot of fight. But if you stay in here, in your own little cave, that's one less fighter on the side of fair." loss Libba Bray
a8278c6 I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else. mourning grief loss depression sorrow death life hollow pass-by numb mourn empty ignore tears forget Robin Hobb
e367223 From the dear comes grief; From the dear comes fear. If you're freed from the dear You'll have no grief, let alone fear. grief loss fear v-212 buddhist Anonymous
2962835 Will you let me go for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? tragedy loss dream identity dreams false-hope facade fake play sad Arthur Miller
f850162 My father died suddenly, but also across the years. He was still dying, really - which meant I guess that he was still living, too. loss loss-of-parent John Green
82ea301 WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE'S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT'S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER. loss Louise Fitzhugh
ceaea5d "When along the pavement, Palpitating flames of life, People flicker around me, I forget my bereavement, loss death my-sisters-keeper submergence star D. H. Lawrence
57f8d7e Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed. Like Schrodinger's cat inside a box you can never ever open. pain loss hope uncertainty David Mitchell
a6c1a3f What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first... it's amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree's heartwood. pain loss sadness life love Ron Rash
e3814e9 "I know what it felt . . . like when I . . . thought you were dead, and-" A small gasp for breath, and her eyes locked on his. "And I wouldn't do that to you." Her bosom fell and her eyes closed. It was a long moment before he could speak. "Thank ye, Sassenach," he whispered, and held her small, cold hand between his own and watched her breathe until the moon rose." loss vigil jamie-fraser near-death Diana Gabaldon
c684b82 Aside from myself, there was no sign of me. existence loss self Nicole Krauss
d4b3a6e "We named the bar The Bar. "People will think we're ironic instead of creatively bankrupt," my sister reasoned. Yes, we thought we were being clever New Yorkers - that the name was a joke no one else would really get, like we did. Not meta-get ... But our first customer, a gray-haired woman in bifocals and a pink jogging suit, said, "I like the name. Like in Breakfast at Tiffany's and Audrey Hepburn's cat was named Cat." irony loss drinking audrey-hepburn breakfast-at-tiffany-s bar the-recession new-yorkers bars new-beginnings snobs cat vanity failure Gillian Flynn
51ceec6 Being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in. It's not so much, what's the point? It's more like, what's the difference? ground-floor suicide loss death life give-up unheard giving-up difference purpose point Mitch Albom
ff1b79a They talked on into the early morning, the high, pale cast of light in the windows, and they did not think of leaving. pain grief loss light pale windows morning leaving talk Raymond Carver
d20afcc Tiffany thought of the little spot in the woods where Granny Weatherwax lay. Remembered. And knew that You had been right. Granny Weatherwax was indeed here. And there. She was, in fact, and always would be, everywhere. loss granny-weatherwax Terry Pratchett
1664fcb "Loss invites reflection and reformulating and a change of strategies. Loss hurts and bleeds and aches. Loss is always ready to call out your name in the night. Loss follows you home and taunts you at the breakfast table, follows you to work in the morning. You have to make accommodations and broker deals to soften the rabbit punches that loss brings to your daily life. You have to take the word "loser" and add it to your resume and walk around with it on your name tag as it hand-feeds you your own shit in dosages too large for even great beasts to swallow. The word "loser" follows you, bird-dogs you, sniffs you out of whatever fields you hide in because you have to face things clearly and you cannot turn away from what is true." loss lesson-from-lossing loser-quotes losing-quotes loss-quotes life-lesson losing Pat Conroy
1077fa7 Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's what part of it means to be alive. But inside our heads -- at least that's where I imagine it -- there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let fresh air in, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live for ever in your own private library. library loss life little-room lost-opportunity Haruki Murakami
15e1ad1 This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that? loss life stolen recovery sad Susanna Kaysen
6c9871e "Everybody has some one thing they do not want to lose," began the man. "You included. And we are professionals at finding out that very thing. Humans by necessity must have a midway point between their desires and their pride. Just as all objects must have a center of gravity. This is something we can pinpoint. Only when it is gone do people realize it even existed." loss midway pride Haruki Murakami
a06d47c Do not grieve so much for a husband lost that it wastes away your life. loss life love grieve Euripides
e5dd3f7 There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything else has ended and nothing else can ever begin. mourning time loss depression sorrow start ending beginning coincide initiate lead mark sign numb mourn empty passage show end space Robin Hobb
ab66acc Bella: How could I live with myself when it's my fault? None of you should be risking yourselves for me - Jasper: Bella, Bella, stop. You're worrying all the wrong things, Bella. Trust me on this - none of us are in jeopardy... Our family is strong. Our only fear is losing you. Bella: But why should you - Alice: It's been almost a century that Edward's been alone. Now he's found you. You can't see the changes that we see, we who have been with him for so long. Do you think any of us want to look into his eyes for the next hundred years if he loses you? loss love Stephenie Meyer
d85bf4a But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking. grief loss sadness love lonesome missing-her mournography no-going-back love-lost heartache missing-someone miss Dennis Lehane
3a2d0be I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said. I know you didn't. I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of. I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir. lessons loss past Cormac McCarthy
34ee79a This you have to understand. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken. pain loss suffering leprosy hurt Stephen R. Donaldson
61dd7b4 The guy who broke up with me... he was exactly like you, in the beginning. Charming, and nice. They're all like you in the beginning. But I always end up like this. And I can't do it anymore. loss love Lisa Kleypas
e1ba69c If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart. grief loss Anne Lamott
3850fa1 It was inevitable, of course, but somehow it didn't seem right to Alex that they would never remember the sound of Carly's laughter, or know how deeply she'd once loved them. loss love Nicholas Sparks
1f21ee0 She would fain have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, 'All are shadows!--all are passing!--all is past! time loss Elizabeth Gaskell
a913409 What you don't know won't hurt you. A dubious maxim: sometimes what you don't know can hurt you very much. pain lies loss learning philosophy philosophy-of-life ignorance knowledge Margaret Atwood
4bc0bdf ..there are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything. loss José Saramago
0affeb3 There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief. grief loss love Barbara Kingsolver
db688a4 Losing one pint of blood's an accident. Losing two is carelessness. loss Rachel Caine
075010d "His thumb went back and forth over the satin, as if he were rubbing her hip as he had when they'd been together, and he moved his leg over so that it was on top of the skirting. It wasn't the same, though. There was no body underneath, and the fabric smelled like lemons, not her skin. And he was, after all, alone in this room that was not theirs. "God, I miss you," he said in a voice that cracked. "Every night. Every day..." loss love J.R. Ward
420cacc I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room loss happiness love mother memory Audrey Niffenegger
1538f84 This wasn't the first time that I'd come close to death, but it was the first time I'd been involved in this part of it, this strange, terrible saying goodbye to someone you've loved. loss love goodbye Madeleine L'Engle
c5bcb1c We knew what we had and what it meant, and though so much had happened since for both of us, there was nothing like those years in Paris, after the war. Life was painfully pure and simple and good, and I believed Ernest was his best self then. I got the very best of him. We got the best of each other. loss life love Paula McLain
54f9252 She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here--the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay. time loss youth Annie Dillard
555d471 My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable loss. loss poetry fear rejection Wisława Szymborska
56647e7 He would find his Susie,inside his young son. Give that love to the living. loss death love inspirational Alice Sebold
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