Quotes About Loss

T]he two fundamental tragedies of human existence, frustrated love and death

In no case is there a loss of personal existence to deplore. Nor will there ever be.

The dead have no compassion for the living.

They never returned. Only the old were left. And they began to die off. Those who did not die left the village by other means. In the end there was only one widow left, a dressmaker, and she began to sew the visages of those who had vanished. She hand-stitched the bodies and the clothes; she perfected the faces. Each and every doll was a precise replica of someone who once lived there.

She loved me with a viciousness that kept me from ever feeling complacent, with the reminder that nothing was permanent, that we would one day be lost to each other.

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew—or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.

The guy on the roof nods--it looks like this time, he heard something--and shouts back at me, "How did you know? How did you know she died?" Someone always dies, I want to yell back at him. Always. If not her, then someone else.

I think she cried at my funeral. It's not that I'm conceited or anything, but I'm pretty sure. Sometimes I can actually picture her talking about me to some guy she feels close to. Talking about me dying. About how they lowered me into the grave, kind of shrivelled up and pitiful, like an old chocolate bar. About how we never really got a chance. And afterwards the guy fucks her, a fuck that's all about making her feel better.

But again and again that night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay on the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred the curtains at the window had been playing with the long grass in the churchyard a few minutes since.

The mother had taken the visitors' room to sleep in ever since the day two months ago when Death had walked whitely into that larger room and frozen with his strange breath the father of her youngest child.

Each of the beings necessary to our existence who disappears takes away with him a whole world of feelings that no other relationship can revive.

For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart.

We've worn our words to death, when now I say: my love, nothing happens, absolutely nothing. And yet, before the words were spent, I'm certain that everything trembled at the mere murmur of your name in the silence of my heart. Now we have nothing to give. There is nothing within you that asks me for water. The past is useless as a rag. And I've told you already: the words are spent. Good-bye.

Something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was the childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that Man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places, who do not have to endure war's savagery, will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.*

The day before yesterday, as I was calmly reading ... I saw a reduced vision of my son Yuri's face, but dead, in a horizontal position, his eyes closed.

It always was the biggest fish I caught that got away.

Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.

The dead! Why can't the dead die!

It's a blessing. It's a curse. It's what you get for saying hello to people. At some point, a good-bye is coming, too. Not just to all the people you love and who love you back, but to the world as well.

The only thing more terrifying than the person who has nothing is the person who has everything. Things can only get worse for them. The more you have, the more you have to lose. And in the end everything must be lost. Is it better to not want anything at all? Maybe, but what about the rest of us, who have some things, which we judiciously manage, like archivists?

Sale un' ora d' attesa in cieIo, vacua, dal mare che s'ingrigia. Un albero ill nuvole sull' acqua cresce, poi crolla come di cinigia. Assente, come manem in questa plaga che ti presente e senza te consuma: sei lontana e pero tutto divaga dal suo soleo, dirupa, spare in bruma.

Black is closing in around my eyes. I realize with a great, tired sadness that I am losing the world. The walls, the molding on the door frame, the yellow of the lamp, his back at the sink… are all achingly beautiful. I reach out and feel myself groping in the air, feel myself falling great distances, feel nothing at all. Suddenly, with a red rush I can breathe and I can see. I get up from the floor before he turns around and says, "You look flushed.