Quotes About Loss

As I Walked Out One Evening," W. H. Auden expresses in a few lines what to me is the essence of the Phoenix Process: O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart. A heart made crooked through loss and change is a heart that can love the world and its less than perfect people.

A heart made crooked through loss and change is a heart that can love the world and its less than perfect people.

grief is good—that it is a sign of how well we have loved. And

She says, "You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.

The ground and the air were as nothing to her, for all her life had been plucked out and there was nothing left but the knowledge that it had been taken away.

The year began to turn, a form moving lightly upon itself, but she minded nothing of the year, for her body had changed, and the hoe and the soil now cut each other sharply, visible and near. 'Jonas,' she said, over and over. It was a name, that was all, a name for something that was gone.

If time were truly linear, she thought, it might have carried her away, leaving the pain behind.

Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours.

I want a book that acknowledges that life goes on but that death goes on, too, that a person who is dead is a long, long story. You move on from it, but the death will never disappear from view. Your friends may say, Time heals all wounds. No, it doesn't, but eventually you'll feel better. You'll be yourself again.

Lighter things will happen to you, birds will steal your husband's sandwich on the beach, and your child will still be dead, and your husband's shock will still be funny.

Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would be waiting for him to say something instead of listening to him say something, it would have been fine.

You could think a grackle was somebody you'd lost, or wronged, or owed a favor to, come back to settle accounts.

Grief, as I understood it - grief and I were acquainted - is the kind of loss that sets you on fire as you struggle to put it out.

I will not ask you for forgiveness. What I have done is unforgivable. I was so lost in hatred and revenge. I never dreamed that I could love you so much. You stole what was left of my heart. And now I've lost you forever.

softly, her voice cracking with emotion. "I will not ask you for forgiveness. What I have done is unforgivable. I was so lost in hatred and revenge. I never dreamed that I could love you so much. You stole what was left of my heart. And now I've lost you forever." She paused, wiping a tear. "But I swear, no harm will come to you as long as I live…and not a day shall pass that I won't miss your smile.…

There is no knowledge like the bitter knowledge of old loves.

The truth is, I feel beyond sad. I feel empty. Numb.

Wherever I go, I'll always see you. You'll always be with me. And there's no happy ending coming here, no way a story that started on a night that's burned into my heart will end the way I wish it could. You're really gone, no last words, and no matter how many letters I write to you, you're never going to reply. You're never going to say good-bye. So I will. Good-bye, Julia. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being you.

She became a story, one I have mostly forgotten. One I can't end because she died a long time ago.

Just once, I wanted to lose something without the whole world watching.

Anger can try to break your heart, but sorrow is what will. What can. What does.

I see what grief does, how it strips you bare, shows you all the things you don't want to know. That loss doesn't end, that there isn't a moment where you are done, when you can neatly put it away and move on.

When someone you love...when they die, you want it undone. You'd do anything to have them back, and it's easy to believe that if only this had happened or that had happened, everything would be fine. And that's what makes you angry. What makes you hate. You don't want to believe that sometimes bad things happen just because they do.

I think... I think sometimes that's how it is. Sometimes people have to go before you get stuff. Before you can really get it.