Quotes About Loss

It's what I lost. I could see him turning the sentence around in his head. Examining it as he would a wound or an illness. And I saw in his eyes the moment he realized that fixers like him and me can easily mend broken things. But we can't easily find lost things. Finding something you lost takes a different kind of skill.

I *was* happy, and the war, which had been so adept at stealing everything I loved, could not steal this, because happiness is not something that can be taken from you. You can lose it, but no one can take it from you. Not even the thief that is war.

These things keep me close to Mama, close even to that part of her I hadn't yet come to fully know because I was too young and we simply ran out of time.

Maybe this is what losing a child does to you. It peels off the top layer of who you are, like a snake shedding its skin, and underneath is new skin, and because it's new, it's not the same.

Love something long enough and true enough and fate will tear it right out of your hands if it chooses, and there's nothing you can do about it.

For a girl, with each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time.

parents dead. Can't backpack, can't do hip hop. Who am I, really? Now I get to find out.

wanted to teach myself how to get old without getting bitter. Then, as I kept on getting older, other things happened, both wonderful and painful. I became a grandmother, my mother died, and I kept on writing. Not only did I write about the things I didn't like that were happening to my body and my mind, I also wrote about how my relationships were changing because of age.

For overthinkers, whose feelings and thoughts about their loss linger much longer than those of nonoverthinkers, the social time clock for "getting over" loss is really punishing. People become tired, even annoyed, with overthinkers for continuing to talk about their loss. They may simply withdraw, or if they can't withdraw, they may eventually blow up at the overthinker, expressing anger and frustration rather than sympathy and concern.

I found myself wondering whether a shared memory can exist if one of the people sharing it no longer remembers it. Is the circuit broken, the memory darkened?

In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned.

Now I was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without leaving a trace. If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger? A couple of houseplants? A dinky Home Depot Phalaenopsis in a coffee can? I personally have always found giving up on something a thousand times harder than getting it started, but evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute, and what's more, he also shut off any chance of amends.

In total, four hundred thousand books in Central Library were destroyed in the fire. An additional seven hundred thousand were badly damaged by either smoke or water or, in many cases, both. The number of books destroyed or spoiled was equal to the entirety of fifteen typical branch libraries. It was the greatest loss to any public library in the history of the United States.

World War II destroyed more books and libraries than any event in human history. The Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books during their twelve years in power.

even though dogs break your heart, they fill it up, even when they're gone.

I was losing her. I found myself wondering whether a shared memory can exist if one of the people sharing it no longer remembers it.

The Nazis alone destroyed an estimated hundred million books during their twelve years in power.

When I miss my mother these days, now that she is gone, I like to picture us in the car together, going for one more magnificent trip to Bertram Woods.

The fire in the library was colorless.

My mother imbued me with a love of libraries. The reason why I finally embraced this book project—wanted, and then needed, to write it—was my realization that I was losing her. I found myself wondering whether a shared memory can exist if one of the people sharing it no longer remembers it. Is the circuit

I know now that even though dogs break your heart, they fill it up, even when they're gone.

The mournfulness felt like a hand pressing on my chest.

On April 29, 1986, the day the library burned

World War II destroyed more books and libraries than any event in human history.