Quotes About Loss

Of all the contracts I had signed, this was perhaps the only one that my father could never have imagined me signing, for it traded what should never be traded. It delivered me into the unknown and erased my father's name. I could not know that this was just the first of many erasures.

Without his books, his room felt like a body with its hearts cut out.

Imagine if [Juliet] woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But [Romeo] had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.

Bitter, bitter, this desolation of angels.

For an instant, at least, they seemed one and the same, as though all anguish exists in the same deep well, no matter what loss or misfortune leads us to it. We might be at odds, hate each other, and desired each others destruction, but in our despair, we are lost in the same darkness, breathing the same air as we choke on our grief.

I'm going to join them", he said. And he did. When Sveva fled, Rath stayed and fought with the rebels. And died with them, right there at the toes of the mountains. And was dragged with them into a big pile. And burned

He wanted to tell her that everything he had done he had done because he was broken, because watching her die had destroyed him, but there was no way to say it that didn't sound like he was trying to pin the blame outside himself

How do you act like you've lost your soul?" Akiva asked. He meant it as a lighthearted question about a children's game, but when he heard himself say the words, he thought, Who knows better than I? You betray everything you believe in. You drown your grief in vengeance. You kill and keep killing until there's no one left.

Once upon a time, there had been gods. Now there were only children going about in their dead parents' undergarments.

You argued before that the dead don't want to be avenged, and that may be right, sometimes, but when you're the one left alive -" "We don't know that they're -" Karou broke in, but couldn't even finish the sentence. "Life feels stolen." "Given." "And the only response that makes sense to the heart is vengeance," he said. "I know. Believe me. But I'm hiding in a shower with you instead of trying to kill you, so it would seem that the heart can change its mind.

This was a game that kill could not win—or, if it did, it would be an unbearable win that destroyed the very meaning of winning.

The youth are the spoils of war.

That was what had finally broken through her blindness. Her father had saved his people and destroyed himself. As strong as he looked, inside he was a ruin, or perhaps a funeral pyre, like the Cusp- only instead of melted bones of ijji, he was made up of the skeletons of babies and children, including, as he had always believed, his own child: her. This was his remorse.

Her lips were still moving, whispering the same words over and over. "They were all I could carry. They were all I could carry.

It was like dying, but without the consolation of oblivion.

The Misbegotten had, in the last year, been pared to a sliver of itself. They had lost so many brothers and sisters that those who remained could have drowned in the ashes of those who had died.

Lazlo had loved Sarai as a dream, and he would love her as a ghost as well.

Without his books, Lazlo felt as though a vital link to his dream had been cut.

In the darkness behind their shut lids they all saw the same thing: no color at all, only loss like a hole torn in the world.

He'd felt this before and never wanted to feel it again. It could only diminish the memory of Madrigal; it already was. Again his memory failed to conjure her face. It was like trying to call up a melody while another song played

He'd had to watch Madrigal die, and he hadn't understood the fervor - the ecstasy - of the crowd. He hadn't understood why the only one who mourned her was the enemy, driven to his knees and bloody from torture.

He had melted away, and she felt his absence like a space cut from the air.

Is life worth keeping on with, whatever happens?" Was she talking about living broken, living with loss? Did she count his loss a real one, and did she really want to know or was there a barb in this somewhere? Sometimes, Akiva felt like he didn't know his sister at all. "Yes," he said, wary, thinking of the thurible, and Karou. "As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better." "Or worse," said Liraz. "Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse.

Such were the humble beginnings of the end of the world: the absence of dreams.