Loss Quotes

If you lose something, do not worry.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

This is probably going to be one wound that can never be healed.

~ Mika Yamamori

I do not know, not do I care to rememberThe time in which I knew distinctly that you were goneYou fade in and out of memoryUpon which I can not feign to touchOr feelHow cruel to leave me With paper but no penWhat a way to leave meYou give me cups, but not water to fill themSo they sit thereEmpty Your reflectionBouncing to and froFrom every surface

~ Queenbe Monyei

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...It was untrue, of course.

~ Adam Haslett

...I did what most kids do when their world feels destroyed. I tried to care less about what remained...This was untrue, of course.

~ Adam Haslett

I'm going to move on, while carrying these feelings with me.

~ Mika Yamamori

I do not know, nor do I care to rememberThe time in which I knew distinctly that you were goneYou fade in and out of memoryUpon which I can not feign to touchOr feelHow cruel to leave me With paper but no penWhat a way to leave meYou give me cups, but not water to fill themSo they sit thereEmpty Your reflectionBouncing to and froFrom every surface

~ Queenbe Monyei

Listen, said Beverly. Let me tell you something. There is no Very Friendly Animal Center. That cat is long gone.

~ Kate Dicamillo

Only marriage combines all three forms of companionship - spouse is family, best friend, and permanent companion. This is why it is widely held that while the death of a child is the most painful loss, the death of a spouse is the most disorienting one.

~ Dennis Prager

Silence then, and the scent of apple trees, and the nightmare sense of grief that comes when a man wakes again to feel a loss he has forgotten in sleep.

~ Mary Stewart

Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land

~ Ruta Sepetys

Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother. The eyes of a mother who has suffered the loss of a child can destroy the soul of anyone who gazes upon them. More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.

~ Suzy Kassem

I still wonder what made him leave. Were they my demons or his own?

~ Vaishnavi Hajari

When I lost my son, I became a citizen of a country I never knew existed.

~ Stephanie Oakes

My boys. I don't have them to hold. What do I do with my arms?

~ Sonali Deraniyagala

Why do they lie?” she asked herself aloud. “They say time makes losing someone you loved easier to deal with, but it only makes it worse.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

Because she is in God's hands.' But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body and if so, why? If God's goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death is unendurably as before it.

~ C.s. Lewis

Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized suddenly that our life had come to an end: I realized that the book I was planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her - and the me which had belonged to her. That was some time ago, and ever since I have been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an end is intolerable to me.

~ Henry Miller

I read obituaries every day to learn what sorts of lives are available to us, to see an entire life compressed into a few column inches, to fit the whole story in my eye at once.

~ Sarah Manguso

There is no loss in life.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

There was a time when I was lucky enough to believe that 'There's this girl in Pakistan' would be the worst five words that Al ever said to me. Years later, they would be totally eclipsed by 'They can't find a heartbeat'.

~ Ruth Ahmed

It wasn't a rock. It was a dog's rubber bone, left behind months ago to be buried first under autumn leaves, then winter snow. Just an old rubber bone, but Batty was already braced for what she knew would come—the rushing in her ears, the stab in her stomach, and the seeping away of the colors from her world. The soft blue spring sky, the yellow forsythia hedge, even Ben's bright red hair—all dulled, all gray and wretched.

~ Jeanne Birdsall

I was terrified that tomorrow the truth would start.

~ Sonali Deraniyagala

It was possible, I found, to both mourn a loss and yet be grateful it happened.

~ Jennifer S. Brown

Why did the sun rise this morningIt's not naturalI don't want to see the lightIt's not time to close the casketOr say Kaddish for my sonI've already buried two fathersWith a mother to comeIsn't that enough Lord who wants usTo exalt and santify HimI don't want to wear the mourner's ribbonOr wake up crying every morningFor God knows how longI don't want to tuck my son into the groundAs if we were putting him to bedFor the last timeClose the prayer book I will not pretendThat God brings peace upon usAnd upon all IsraelI don't want to hear anyoneScolding me from her wheelchairBecause I'm crying too hardI'm not worried about a heart attackNothingnessYou've already broken my heartI will not forgive youSun of emptinessSky of blank cloudsI will not forgive youIndifferent GodUntil you give back my son

~ Edward Hirsch

Friedrich Rückert wrote 425 poemsAfter his two youngest childrenDied from scarlet feverWithin sixteen days of each otherIn 1833 and 1834 he could not copeAnd often thought they had gone outFor a while they'll be home soonHe told himself to tell his wifeThey're only taking a long walkMahler scored five of those poemsIn 1901 and 1904 for a vocalistAnd an orchestra to break your heartAs soon as I heard the plaintive oboe And the descending movement of the hornAnd the lyric baritone enteringI felt I should not be listeningTo Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singingKindertotenlieder with the Berlin PhilharmonicMahler's wife was superstitiousAnd thought he was chancing disasterWith Songs on the Death of ChildrenNow the sun wants to rise so brightlyAs if nothing terrible had happened overnightThat tragedy happened to me aloneMahler knew he could never have written themAfter his four-year-old daughter diedFrom scarlet fever three years laterHe said he felt sorry for himselfThat he needed to write these songsAnd for the world that would listen to them

~ Edward Hirsch

Saying goodbye to someone you love isn’t really the hard part. It’s living every day, not being able to say anything to them at all.

~ Laurel Ulen Curtis

The sorrow we feel when we lose a loved one is the price we pay to have had them in our lives.

~ Rob Liano

We may be different, but in this moment we're feeling the exact same thing: the sad kind of bliss where you realize, suddenly, how perfect your life really has been all along. So perfect it hurts, and you could let yourself weep if you wanted. So perfect that even though everything you know is ending, you truly believe life will continue to be beautiful, even—or maybe especially—in those pure moments of loss.

~ Emily Henry

Time is pulling us apart. With every second that passes, the space between us widens. Today, I saw him yesterday. In a few days, it will have been last week. Then, last month. And there is nothing I can do to keep time from wedging more of itself between us. It is inevitable. - Miles

~ Will Kostakis

They are dead. We are dead. It is over.

~ Victoria Aveyard

We get sombre about death. Think about Charon the ferryman rowing the souls across the Styx to the Isle of the Dead. Pretty grim stuff. Unless you think that, perhaps, at times, old Charon rows souls back to the land of the living too. Perhaps I have merely gone to rest awhile…

~ Sean J Halford

I'm crying again. I cry so often now that sometimes I don't even realize it until the tears are already streaming down my cheeks.

~ Kim Holden

I had often said that I would write, the wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. In short, I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.' Gertrude Stein wrote this in the voice of her partner, Alice B. Toklas, Stein being apparently the genius, Alice apparently the wife. 'I am nothing,' Alice said after Gertrude dies, 'but a memory of her.'...the flashing blues and red made him look ill, then well, then ill again...

~ Lauren Groff

Can anyone actually find a replacement for a lost loved one?Isn't there a difference between things and human beings?

~ Honeya

At the same moment a cold chill traced a finger down the middle of my back. Sometimes things come back to you, that's all. Sometimes they come back.

~ Stephen King

Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost was completely full of shit.

~ Paula Stokes

To be honest about it, I didn’t even always like Sharley. Maybe that’s the way it is with friends. Maybe the liking isn’t the most essential part of being friends. Maybe it’s the sticking by. Maybe it’s the impression of yourself you get through your friend’s eyes. Or maybe it’s all the little lessons you learn.

~ Rk Vetter

Even when the lightening flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.

~ Stephen King

She can feel her vanished talent like a phantom limb, the empty ache of its subtraction from the short list of her assets, and she knows with spiteful certainty that it is gone for good.

~ Christina Moracho