Quotes About Loss

At what point do we just re-create the people who have disappeared from our lives?

I can't remember how to cry.

An Indian's wealth   Is determined by what they lose And not by what they save.

she braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep roots buried in the earth she told me the old stories how time never mattered when she died they gave me her clock

She wanted to find a way to love them in death, because she forgot how to love them in life.

Mary was a bright and shining star," Mr. P said. "And then she faded year by year until you could barely see her anymore.

Father Arnold finished the ceremony and asked if anybody had any final words for the dearly departed. Final words? Chess asked, I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop talking about this.

He was my best friend and I needed him.

When people consider the meaning of genocide, they might only think of corpses being pushed into mass graves. But a person can be genocided - can have every connection to his past severed - and live to be an old man whose ribcage is a haunted house around his heart.

What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.

He felt split in two, one crazy man eating hair and one rational man watching a crazy man eat hair. He chewed and swallowed the last pieces of his father's life. He felt like he was building a museum of pain, a freak show, where he was the only visitor viewing the only mutant screaming the only prayer he knew: Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back, Daddy. Come back Daddy...

What do you say to people when they ask you how it feels to lose everything?

My name is Sherman Alexie and I was born from loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss and loss. And loss.

I think you forget things on purpose," my mother's ghost said.

No, Miss Warren said. Your sister, she's dead

What do you say to people when they ask you how it feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?

cry huge, gasping tears.

But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.

Jesus, I thought, is there a better and more succinct definition of grief than It hurts a little to breathe, but we're okay?

Great pain is repetitive. Grief is repetitive.

Sometimes I caught my mother digging through old photo albums or staring at the wall or out the window. She'd get that look on her face that I knew meant she missed my father. Not enough to want him back. She missed him just enough for it to hurt. On

What greater grief than the loss of one's native land?

When anybody, no matter how old they are, loses a parent, I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know?

I know that death is never added to death; it multiplies.