Quotes About Grief

I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

My father died of brain cancer in 1991. I do not know anyone whose life has not been touched by the loss of a loved one to cancer. I wrote my book 'Gracefully Gone' about my father's fight and my struggle growing up with an ill parent. I wrote it to help others know they are not alone in this all-too-often insurmountable war against cancer.

'Hard Hit,' a YA collection of poems, explores the country of grief and survival. Mark, a 16-year-old boy and skilled pitcher, must confront the coming death of his beloved father with the help of his friends, family, baseball, and an idiosyncratic belief in God. I used my own experience of my parents' deaths to inform this journey.

If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts - but it's not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it's any better - but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.

Your friend dies, and people always say, 'Oh, he lives through me,' or whatever. But it's just sad that they're not living. If a person dies that's close to them, then they say, 'I lost this person.' It always tripped me out because I would always be like, 'Yeah, but that person lost their life.'

When I had to bury my child, I probably didn't start grieving until a year and a half later.

I got married two weeks before my mom passed away, and then a year later, I was receiving some kind of artistic success that I'd never had. All of these really beautiful things happened where I was in love and I had a career I loved, but it was all kind of under the shadow of this really dark and painful thing.

My very best friend died in a car accident when I was 16 years old. That was the hardest blow emotionally that I have ever had to endure. Suddenly, you realize tomorrow might not come. Now I live by the motto, 'Today is what I have.'

I was raised an orphan... My mother died when I was 2 years old.

The lack of closure in an unsolved case seems to have a sharpening effect on those left behind; the details remain vivid to them even years later, possibly because they've gone over them looking for answers so many times.

Seven years after my mother's passing, I still reach for the phone for a split second to call her. We spoke every day.

Michael died five years ago this January, and the first thing that really struck me about the script was the part about her peeling off from the funeral and just getting into a rowboat and having a real kind of cry where nobody was.

I lost my dad two years ago to cancer, and before he died, I asked him to write 'Daddy's Little Girl' on a piece of paper for me. I told him it was for an album. He practiced and practiced and then sent it to me, and I had it tattooed onto my wrist and surprised him with it. He cried when he saw it, happy tears. This way I always carry him with me.

There's some things I can't write about, just terrible personal tragedies.

The biggest tragedy I had was the loss of my daughter from neuromuscular disease in 2000, at age 46.

At the root of everything I write is tragedy.

Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.

In the midst of the sense of tragedy or loss, sometimes laughter is not only healing, it's a way of experiencing the person that you've lost again.

I had friends who died in the 9/11 tragedy; some of my friends lost family members in the aftermath of Godhra.

If I told you the tragedy parts, we'd all sit here and cry.

Since my mother passed away, my father and I forged a bond that is so tighter than one could possibly imagine. Keep in mind, I am an only child, so I was always fiercely close with both my parents. The tragedy my father and I endured when my mother passed created a bond between us that no amount of force can break.

Poetry is not about personal pain or tragedy. It should resonate the society's grief.

Mum was an amazing parent and my best pal. The tragedy of it, really, was that she died from breast cancer just as I was becoming a man, aged 17, and we were just starting to speak as adults. She was snatched away, and it felt cruel. She made me laugh.