Quotes About Loss

Oh, my poor child." I felt the touch of Miss Winter's hand on my shoulder, and while I cried over the corpses of my broken words, her hand remained there, lightly.

The other rooms were thick with the corpses of suffocated words.

It was odd to think that only a few years ago she had been Helena Greville. It seemed a lot longer. When she thought about that girl now it was as if she was thinking about someone she used to know, and know quite well, but would never see again. Helena Greville was gone for good.

Gone were her fiery orange and resplendent purple. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved chemise, and she was weeping.

He was the first of my ghosts.

regretted that he had to comfort me for his own loss.

The beginning, perhaps. The girl without the mother. But after that . . . I wish someone could tell me what it means. I wish there was someone who could just tell me the truth.

Terminado el entierro, por fin podría llorar. Pero no pude. Mi lágrimas, contenidas durante demasiado tiempo, se habían secado. Tendrían que quedarse dentro para siempre.

but death so rapidly undoes a person, and the detail of her face was hard to recall in any ordinary way.

Viruses were evil incarnate that added to the world's suffering and created useless deaths.

My husband ...has passed away. This is a euphemism, of course. I mean to say that he is dead. He is departed from this world. He is elsewhere and singing with the angels...there is another euphemism: singing with the angels. I ask you, why is it so hard to stay away from euphemisms? They creep in, always, and attempt to make the difficult things more pleasing.

But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine.

The vague expression was gone from his eyes - I had a feeling it was gone forever.

rich old gentleman who lived at Scoatney Hall, five miles away, always sent us a ham at Christmas whether we paid the rent or not. He died last November and we have sadly missed the ham.

Make no mistake about it,' George W. Bush told the American people the day after the attacks. 'We will win.' We haven't. The world is not less, but more, dangerous. It's one thing to launch a war with certain goals and not to attain those goals. It's another entirely to declare war and achieve the exact opposite of your stated intentions. If there is anything worse than losing a war, surely this is it?

One of the advantages bowling has over golf is that you seldom lose a bowling ball.

The instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms.

Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.

Too much has been forgotten in the name of memory.

I'd never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying. This was not the frailty of a man who is said to be only human, subject to a weakness or a vulnerability. This was a wave of sadness and loss that made me understand that I was a man expanded by grief.

The world is full of abandoned meanings.

The words were old and true, full of reassurance, comfort, consolation. Men followed such words to their death because other men before them had done the same, and perhaps it was easier to die than admit that words could lose their meaning.

The falling away of things we carry around with us, twilight and chimney smoke.

The instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms. Then she wedged herself through the narrow opening in the boards and he watched her cross the street. Nothing moved out there. She was the lone stroke of motion, crew and extras gone, equipment gone, and she was cool and silvery slim and walking head-high, with technical precision, toward the last trailer in the service station, where she would find her clothes, dress quickly and disappear.