Grief Quotes

The real satire starts when I’m shockingly mocked,not mockingly shocked.

~ Munia Khan

Gos was still out there in the forest, the dark forest to which all things lost must go. I'd wanted to slip across the borders of this world into that wood and bring back the hawk White lost. Some part of me that was very small and old had known this, some part of me that didn't work according to the everyday rules of the world but with the logic of myths and dreams. And that part of me had hoped, too, that somewhere in that other world was my father. His death had been so sudden. there had been no time to prepare for it, no sense in it happening at all. He could only be lost. He was out there, still, somewhere out there in that tangled wood with all the rest of the lost and dead. I know now what those dreams in spring had meant, the ones of a hawk slipping through a rent in the air into another world. I'd wanted to fly with the hawk to find my father; find him and bring him home.

~ Helen Macdonald

His mother was as frosty as the polar icecaps. His sister was gone. Who did he have that cared about him? Who would remind him that he mattered?

~ Sofia Grey

Was it really just an hour ago that he’d licked me into nirvana at the top of the hill? We’d been buying condoms and planning an afternoon of hot sex, and now we were on a witch-hunt. Seeking retribution. Out for blood.

~ Sofia Grey

Honoring a life is honoring the wide open space of wilderness and unknowing where the sacred dwells.

~ Shannon Huffman Polson

Resurrection does not come without crucifixion, and you cannot celebrate Easter without living Good Friday.

~ Shannon Huffman Polson

Suffering is a jealous and lonely state. It can't abide the company of anything else. It is greedy, it demands all of one's energies.

~ Shannon Huffman Polson

Icy fingers walked down my spine, and I realized I was trembling. I wanted this to stop. Wanted Jas to stop before he made this whole situation a million times worse, but I couldn’t speak.

~ Sofia Grey

Are we meant to be pilgrims of the depths?

~ Shannon Huffman Polson

Tears are part of the leeway of the common areas of a hospital, since so many have to do their crying away from the patient's bed. You don't care who sees you cry in the lobby: it was port of entry for all the sorrows, and one gave up all one's previous citizenship at the border.

~ Paul Monette

What is known might sometimes sustain us, but what is unknown will save us.

~ Shannon Huffman Polson

Grief would weave itself among the threads of love and life and hope, and I was starting to believe that what came of it all would still one day be beautiful.

~ Shannon Huffman Polson

No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days.

~ Jojo Moyes

I want to tell him that I don't know what i feel. I want him but i'm frightened to want him. I don,t want my happiness to be entirely dependent on somebody else's to be a hostage to fortunes I cannot control.

~ Jojo Moyes

Sometimes for our sanity own sanity we just have to look at the bigger picture.

~ Jojo Moyes

When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans.Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.

~ Jojo Moyes

You can do the impossible, because you have been through the unthinkable.

~ Christina Rasmussen

[W]e’ve learned that grief can sometimes get loud, and when it does, we try not to speak over it.

~ Bill Clegg

I know you are afraid, you are afraid to get hurt again. But I also know that you are not meant to grieve forever.

~ Christina Rasmussen

Creosote made Mandy think of the thrill of rushing through a garden sprinkler as a kid, of playing washer toss in the backyard, of spending nights in the neighbors’ huge in-ground swimming pool when she was twelve, throwing glow sticks in the turquoise water during Canada Day block parties. She thought of Jud for a moment, how he’d loved doing all those things when he was a kid, but how, as he got older, it was all about popularity, sports, a life of illusion… and without warning, a totally different kind of memory filled her mind – the dull feeling of her head hitting the concrete walls near the wood shop at her old high school, the sounds of kids laughing, the sharp smell of sawdust, the buzzing of electric sanders nearby, the sound of Jud laughing while he beat her up… without realizing it, she’d started crying noiselessly.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

The voice of grief is rather convincing, isn’t it? It tells you you’re “too old,” “not good enough,” or “not worthy enough” for another chance at life, that starting over is impossible. This voice in your head is the first thing you hear in the morning and the last thing you hear at night. It drives with you to work. It stays with you at lunch. Its message is so consistent that because of its repetitive power, you may be inclined to believe it. But, as persuasive as the voice of grief is, everything it says is a lie.It’s all a pack of lies.Do you want the truth? If you do, then start listening to life calling to you inside your grief.How? Every time you are yearning to be held and loved, to laugh again, listen to your yearning. Do not listen to your fear . . . Listen to life calling you, “I am here, come on over. Take a chance on me. I am your life, and you’re all that I’ve got.

~ Christina Rasmussen

Grief doesn't arrive on schedule, as much as we'd like to.

~ Dave Eggers

Sorrowers tend to avoid what they are most fond of and try to give vent to their grief.

~ Seneca

I had to see the beauty of my future so I could create it. I gave airtime to my dreams, and they spoke to me.I recognized grief’s voice and turned the volume down. Was it easy? No.Was I scared? Yes.Did fear get in the way? Heck, no. And it never will.My life is worth more than that. Your life is too.

~ Christina Rasmussen

Can you imagine how lonely she must have felt when she received that phone call? Your lover has just died, your companion has abandoned you, but don't you dare make an inappropriate sound, because your family is around. No one to touch you the way he did, no one to understand you, no one to hug you to sleep, but don't dare allow your face to show a glint of grief. The cutting pain of feeling alone amid loved ones.

~ Rabih Alameddine

Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time. So we keep them in our memories.And when we regret that we don’t have more memories of them, maybe our minds give us more gifts; gradually we find ourselves remembering them being with us in times and places that they couldn’t have been, and gradually we stop correcting ourselves because, well, we want them to have been there.

~ Dathan Auerbach

Come on, get up, get up, you can't just sit! But he was still crying and that had to be finished.

~ Ray Bradbury

I destroyed that doll, hoping the sacrifice would somehow reverse time and bring my father back. I was a mad scientist and an angry child.

~ Walter Mosley

No parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk

~ Emily Brontë

You think knowing things will solve your private little griefs?

~ Kiana Davenport

It was good. It was like something inordinately beautiful and out of this world. Like I’d found an actual planet that I didn’t know had been there all along. Planet Heroin. The place where there was no pain.

~ Cheryl Strayed

The end of times? said Nanny. Look, Tiff, Esme tol' me to say, if you want to see Esmerelda Weatherwax, then just you look around. She is here. Us witches don't mourn for very long. We are satisfied with happy memories - they're there to be cherished.

~ Terry Pratchett

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

~ Albert Camus

Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love it—grieving is a sign of spiritual health. But it is not enough to weep for our lost landscapes; we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again. Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair.

~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

He was now working his way through the many shades of grief. Sadness made everything gray, he'd learned, but there were different types of gray, some darker than others. There were dark spots in his memories he wasn't brave enough to enter.

~ Lauren Destefano

My heart is broken and I grieve, for I have known love. Your heart is broken and you grieve, for you have not.

~ Jesikah Sundin

It had been so long since I'd written, really written, that I'd forgotten what it felt like--how it changed things, shifted everything. I'd forgotten how writing surprises you--how you sit down feeling one thing and come out feeling another--and that I'd never heard my dad's voice in my head like this before, never known I could feel this close to him again, that this letter from him might ever exist. But here it was.

~ Margo Rabb

Ice upon ice, and yet, inside, she melted and mourned all the same.

~ Katherine Mcintyre

Grief lets you indulge in it, so that it can feed itself.

~ Sreesha Divakaran

This was not [him]. It was a thing, with all the [him]-ness gone from it. Death takes the person and leaves his shell behind, like a hollowed-out tree.

~ Anne Ursu