Quotes from Laura Zigman

I know what it does to you, I know. Maybe that's why we hold on as hard as we do. We just can't believe that such a miracle can happen to us twice. But it can, someday you'll find it again.

There are few things sadder in this life than watching someone walk away after they've left you. Watching the distance between your bodies expand until there's nothing but empty space and silence.

Peaks and valleys. That's what life comes down to, in the end. Fucking geography.

Hope erodes slowly, over time, until you wake up one night at three o'clock in the morning and realize: I am not meant for that kind of thing.

Sisterhood, like marriage, takes hard work. And, like marriage, both sisters have to really want to be in the relationship to stay together.

Some children grow stronger in the broken places, like bones; others grow sadder. I did both.

If life—and my job—have taught me anything, it should be that every family is a mille-feuille of pathos and neuroses, sins and secrets. Someday I'll stop assuming that everyone except me grew up feeling at home in their homes.

Yet no one is really alone; those who live no more echo still within our thoughts and words, and what they did is part of what we have become — Blessing of Memory, Mediations Before Kaddish

And yet: reacting feels involuntary. As long as we're both breathing, we'll probably forever misread each other's faces; second-guess and misinterpret each other's thoughts, feelings, and motives in the worst possible way.

the painful irony of your mother fighting for inclusion that doesn't include you is still decades away.

Maybe my behavior is less about what I'm hiding and more about wanting to keep things hidden. Secrecy feels like power. And safety.

So little gives me joy now that I'm afraid I'll get rid of every single thing I've ever owned and end up with nothing. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Feeling empty only makes me want to be emptier.

He wanted me to be free of the past so I could be open to the future. So Alan named him after the white pines at Camp Fantastic. The tall, tall trees that had watched over Asher, and Eleanor, and everyone who had ever come here. The trees that framed a small beautiful world where joy transcended grief, and where the sounds of children, once alive, now gone, can still be heard.

But there is the loneliness. The aloneness. How I startle awake in the dark, panicked, full of dread, floating on the night sea on a tiny raft surrounded by all that vast blackness. I see myself from above. The light from the moon guides me nowhere. I'm connected to nothing and no one, lost

Grief obliterates the present, forcing you to relive the past and dread the future.

I meant that sometimes we choose partners who, in some ways, remind us of our parents. The good and the bad parts of them.

Isn't everyone's true purpose to love and be loved? To be in service to and to take care of those who need us most?

Autumn, my favorite season, has always made me sad—the brightness of the sky and trees, the promise of hope and renewal always feels like a trick, an invitation for disappointment, instead of a gift.