He’d lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives.

I can’t shake you.

The scene sucker-punched Max. He never saw it coming. It encapsulated in one poignant instant the tragic beauty of his family history.

When we touch the center of sorrow, when we sit with discomfort without trying to fix it, when we stay present to the pain of disapproval or betrayal and let it soften us, these are...

. . . I understand that I was writing (recording) as well as seeking to right (to rectify) the wrong, and now, as I retell the tale, I realize that ‘I am still at the...

Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can’t feel grief unless you’ve had love before it – grief is the final outcome of love, because it’s love...

You don’t even realize you’re living in a before until you wake up one day and find yourself in an after.

Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect...

The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideas—to make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitrary and...

There are no coincidences in life. What person that wandered in and out of your life was there for some purpose, even if they caused you harm. Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense the short periods...

To multiply the years and divide by the desire to live is a kind of false accounting.

Grief dares us to love once more.

Sydney discovers that she minds the loss of her mourning. When she grieved, she felt herself to be intimately connected to Daniel. But with each passing day, he floats away from her. When she thinks...

In all his imaginings, he had never envisioned her crying. He knew that her son had died, but he’d never expected that her pain might be anything he could recognize, almost as though he believed...

I could feel their grief as if it were a beast holding us down.

The abundance of small things, it’ll bury you.

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the...

Everyone who lives long enough to love deeply will experience great losses. Don’t let fear of loss, or the losses themselves, take away your ability to enjoy the wonderful life that is yours.

…Porque la muerte, lo que suprime no es a los seres cercanos y que son nuestra vida misma. Lo que la muerte se lleva para siempre es su recuerdo, la imagen que se va borrando,...

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly

No one can keep his grieves in their prime; they use themselves up.

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of...

Experience teaches that the fire of mental grief is intensified by being confined to its own hearth.

I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.

There is a feeling of disbelief that comes over you, that takes over, and you kind of go through the motions. You do what you’re supposed to do, but in fact you’re not there at...

A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don’t have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events...

There is no loss, if you cannot remember what you have lost.

I believe I gather strength from the generations of women who came before me – that together we all hold the suffering of the world.

You have to. You can’t bleed it out. You can’t keep pretending, drinking it down.

Man is more himself, more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing and grief superficial.

I have more than once tried to analyse this apparently deliberate form of self-torture that seems common to so many people in face of the extinction of a valued life, human or animal, and it...

Happiness is not something to be pursued, it is something met, an encounter. Most encounters, however, have a sequel; this is their promise. The encounter with happiness has no sequel. All is there instantly. Happiness...

I’ve attempted to flood the path with light where I could, and where I could not I’ve wanted at least to hold up a candle so that others coming this way might not stumble too...

Hold in, hold in, one crack and the wall is breached. I need now to be finite, self-contained, to stop this bacterial grief dividing and multiplying till its weight is the weight of the world....

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don’t know grief...

Man of an hard heart! Hear me, Proud, Stern, and Cruel! You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue, but would not! You are the destroyer of my Soul;...

Most kids grow sullen and angry when they’re working through issues, but Thanet mustered up another kind of bull-headed strength. The kind that sees beyond circumstances to what really matters. How could anyone hurt a...

It is our ultimate goal to hold UCI accountable for the clear harm and grief that it has caused our clients.

As the sky faded to night, her anger dissipated—but not in a healing way, just dulled, like forged iron sizzling in a cold pail of water.

This time, there are no tears. This time, there is only emptiness and I feel it set in the straight line of my mouth. I am not strong enough for this. I want an earthquake,...

She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else – with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James....

Somehow the thought she might be next wasn’t nearly as terrifying as the realization he was gone.

The agonies of remorse poison the luxury there is otherwise sometimes found in the excess of grief.

Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.

For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms.

And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into...

Watching someone you love… die? There are no words for how broken that makes a person. It’s like waking up from a bad dream only to find out that it’s you reality, it’s like watching...

… he wasn’t crying for the woman who had died. He was crying for the woman she had been.

Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face – I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves:...