Loss Quotes

If you love something, know that it will leave on a day you are far from ready.

~ Kathleen Rooney

I need to confront my loss, not run away from it. I wanted to wade in with my eyes open and all my senses alert. I wanted to register everything, from the giant waves of sorrow to the inkiest ripples of remorse. I didn't want to miss any of it.

~ Alex George

Maybe this was my punishment, and perhaps justly so. 'It wasn't meant to be', Khala Jamila had said. Or, maybe, it was meant not to be.

~ Khaled Hosseini

I had heard the wind from the mountains calling me last night, telling me it was my time to go, and I woke up, knowing what to do.

~ V.c. Andrews

I was the last of the four Dresden dolls. Only me... and I didn't want to be here.

~ V.c. Andrews

Okay.' I can feel the letters vomit off my tongue.O.K.A. Y.I watch the vet insert the syringe into the catheter and inject the second drug. And then the adventures come flooding back:The puppy farm.The gentle untying of the shoelace.THIS! IS! MY! HOME! NOW!Our first night together.Running on the beach.Sadie and Sophie and Sophie Dee.Shared ice-cream cones.Thanksgivings.Tofurky.Car rides.Laughter.Eye rain.Chicken and rice.Paralysis.Surgery.Christmases.Walks.Dog parks.Squirrel chasing.Naps.Snuggling.'Fishful Thinking.'The adventure at sea.Gentle kisses.Manic kisses.More eye rain.So much eye rain.Red ball.The veterinarian holds a stethoscope up to Lily's chest, listening for her heartbeat.All dogs go to heaven.'Your mother's name is Witchie-Poo.' I stroke Lily behind her ears the way that used to calm her. 'Look for her.'OH FUCK IT HURTS.I barely whisper. 'She will take care of you.

~ Steven Rowley

The sun was hot and bright. A day for fishing, for swimming, for playing tennis and having fun, and they put my Christopher in the ground.

~ V.c. Andrews

Grief seems to create losses within us that reach beyond our awareness--we feel as if we're missing something that was invisible and unknown to us while we had it, but is now painfully gone...Longing is not conscious wanting; it's an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we've lost.

~ Brené Brown

Sometimes a tragedy must happen to keep a soul on schedule. This is the reason for things that seem to have no reason. This is the reason that we cannot fathom when we are going through it.Perhaps I will get very sick. People wonder why cancer exists when it is just a clever method to teach people lessons about love and loss. It borrows time or steals it depending on the needs of Heaven. It is a vehicle to get us where we need to be. It calls us home because something needs us there.

~ Kate Mcgahan

I know why she cried like that. She cried because she wasn't finished grieving the loss of me. When someone has an exaggerated emotional reaction to something in the present, it's usually because they haven't resolved something in their past.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Heartbreak is an altogether different thing. Disappointment doesn't grow into heartbreak, nor does failure...It comes form the loss of love or the perceived loss of love...Heartbreak is what happens when love is lost.

~ Brené Brown

Only I had dry eyes, a dry heart.

~ V.c. Andrews

You seem to forget that the sun must set. You knew perfectly well that I would not be with you long enough. Still, you weep and cry and ask God ‘Why’ as if it were some kind of surprise. Why? Because love changes everything. Love’s the surprise.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Grief leads you to believe that life will never be ordinary again, and it never really will be for it is made extraordinary as it is touched and transformed by our greatest loves and deepest losses.

~ Kate Mcgahan

One gains by losing and loses by gaining.

~ Lao Tzu

The things left unsaid to people we care about, and the void those unspoken words leave, often have more impact than what is said.

~ Tyler Knight

Grief is an emotional rollercoaster.You will have your ups and downsand moments of terrorand brief moments of peace.You can only go as fastas the ride will take you.Just remember:It will end and you will be okay.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.

~ Louise Erdrich

After she was gone, I sheathed her sword at my belt, draped her cloak over my shoulders, carried her heart in my arms, and, somehow, went on.

~ Marie Lu

You will never know loneliness when you have a dog, when you lose that dog it will be loneliness like you've never known.

~ Michael P. Naughton

Something or someone is always waving goodbye.

~ Marty Rubin

Riley's sway as he disappeared down the alley, I recognized it. It wasn't booze. It was the thing that happened when a little too much got a little too messed up. They sway, it's what creeps over a person when they've begun to empty out and don't care enough to put anything back, to replace what has been lost.

~ Kathleen Glasgow

instead of mourning, instead of a moment of silence or a hateful, islamophobic message, how about today we make the world a little brighter?be kinder. be a little gentler, with yourself and others. take more pictures. tell more jokes. be a better human.today is a lot more than a tragedy. today is a birthday. a day of suicide awareness. a wedding. a birth. a new job. today is a kiss and someone on a tarred over warehouse roof whispering about the day the earth stood still and the day it began spinning again.be kind. just be kind. it's time we took this day back for the wild ones, for the fiery eyes, for the happy and the brave and the new. no more mourning. let it just be a sunday.

~ Taylor Rhodes

There are few things emptier than the space where a Christmas tree used to be.

~ Kate Lord Brown

Perhaps it is worse when love has flowed freely to find it one day dammed.

~ Jeanette Winterson

I used to get so worked up about this or that boy, or who was passing notes in math class. All that stuff seems so far away now, ever since Real Life came along and punched me in the face.

~ M. Verano

One small decision can shape an entire life. Sometimes, if you're lucky, the biggest hardship can lead to your greatest blessing. It just takes time to see that God works in mysterious ways.

~ Penelope Ward

By the time we hit our forties, we've all known pain--it's been layered on us like so many coats of paint. Who's to say which heartbreak is the greatest: Losing a child or never having a romantic relationship? Surviving cancer or having a mentally ill son? All painful life events gouge deep furrows and cause emotions to bleed out of us--shock, sorrow, and dismay. Through these tragedies, we are constantly rediscovering ourselves, peeling off the personas we've created to fit in socially and reaching for the unaltered seed of self within us. We'll never completely know our raw core--never completely be able to separate the white of external influences from the yolk of our true selves. But we can ask the questions, keep on with the quest.

~ Colbert

Their boots were black and shiny and your treasures gleamed like stars,Bones from deep down in the fertile crescent.

~ John Darnielle

If the thought of losing someone doesn't scare the shit out of you, then it's not love

~ Penelope Ward

Love and loss come in equal measure.

~ Kate Lord Brown

One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness). One only meets each hour or moment that comes. All manner of ups and downs. Many bad spots in our best times, many good ones in our worst. One never gets the total impact of what we call ‘the thing itself’. But we call it wrongly. The thing itself is simply all these ups and downs: the rest is a name or an idea.

~ C.s. Lewis

Sometimes we hold the world in our hands, but in our greed for more let it fall, losing everything that we once had.

~ Felix O. Hartmann

Perfect devices: doctors, ghosts and crows. We can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God.

~ Max Porter

Walk with me, memory to memory, the shared path, the mutual view. Walk with me. The past lies in wait. It is not behind. It seems to be in front. How else could it trip me as as I start to run?

~ Jeanette Winterson

GriefWoke up early this morning and from my bedlooked far across the Strait to seea small boat moving through the choppy water,a single running light on. Rememberedmy friend who used to shouthis dead wife’s name from hilltopsaround Perugia. Who set a platefor her at his simple table long aftershe was gone. And opened the windowsso she could have fresh air. Such displayI found embarrassing. So did his otherfriends. I couldn’t see it.Not until this morning.

~ Raymond Carver

It was magic to be above [the clouds], to see their uppermost contours, the way they caught the light and held it, their vast shadows moving upon the face of the earth. I wished I could open the window and know what the world sounded like at that altitude. I thought about the solitude of that world, how it must be inhabited by the voice of the wind, only. ... I thought about what my crows saw as they flew above canyons and treetops, the birds-eye view of life. They would recognize specific trees, perches, and nesting sites from a completely different perspective than I could. Their maps differed from mine; they knew the topography, the contours of the landscape, on a much grander scale.

~ Elizabeth J. Church

I wanted to pretend for just a little longer that I was whole again. Happy. Then I'd figure out how to pick up the pieces and move on.

~ L.a. Fiore

And in the silence what followed, I reckon our eyes had some long conversation our mouths could’ve never talked through. Some long, looking talk about things gone and long since said. About cries out in the night and some long ago tangling of limbs. And about them betrayals done time and time again—by both of us—what led to me pointing the Green Man’s rifle at the man what once loved me under the Green Man’s stars.

~ J.d. Jordan

Maybe I’d lost something. Maybe I’d lost a lot—more, even, than I could suffer—but I still had my own self. And lonesome as I might be, wasn’t no force on Earth or from above what could make me less.

~ J.d. Jordan