Loss Quotes

Do you know what it's like to be blessed with someone so special, to love them so much it hurts, and then have them taken from you forever?

~ Kim Holden

As I listened I felt a dull numbness, like the effect of chloroform, rather than the primal, anarchic agony you usually feel when you encounter someone you have loved now turned to dust, in some object like a little bowl, and you are required to believe that it is still the same person who once smiled at you.

~ Magda Szabó

Simple Kate had wanted to say, I'm already dead.

~ Kimberly Mccreight

But how can one regret what, to the mind, has never existed? Even loss is an inaccurate description, for what loss is without the awareness of losing?

~ Nicole Krauss

Certainly she could never have exchanged pleasantries with anyone. What would there be for them to say anyway? Sorry? Sorry your daughter is dead, Sorry your daughter jumped off the roof of her school when you were on your way to pick her up. Sorry you were late. Too bad you'll be reliving that failure for the rest of your miserable life.

~ Kimberly Mccreight

The beauties of the North seemed to be intensified by the loss we had experienced there, and they drew us back to them.

~ David Almond

One lost easiest what one held in one’s arms— never what one left.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

When we are sad...it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to things that don't change.

~ Donna Tartt

Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren’t the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary,” Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. “Sydney Tar Ponds,” Mearth added, “I’ve had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I’ve forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult… very sad… to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren’t worth the trouble. I’d rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren’t always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn’t you agree?”“No,” Alecto told her. “I think you’re insane.

~ Rebecca Mcnutt

A star's light still shines even if there's no one to see it, but without someone to remember Jesse, his light will disappear.

~ Shaun David Hutchinson

An emotionally abusive relationship, in very simplistic terms, is much like standing up in a too hot bath and sinking back in so as not to feel so dizzy.

~ Jackie Haze

The things that truly define me can’t be lost.

~ Amy Neftzger

It could have been avoided. This couch misery spiral, this … loss … I could’ve avoided the bulk of it simply by doing more. I could’ve given a shit...

~ Emma Mills

She didn't know if she was crying because Illukar was going to die, or because Ieskar already had.

~ Andrea K. Höst

And sometimeswhen she does remember,she calls me her little angeland she knows where she isand everything is all rightfor a second or a minuteand then we cry;she for the life that she lostI for the woman I only know about through the stories of her children.

~ Rebecca Rijsdijk

All I'd done for the past ten years was talk about it. I was sick of talking...sick of analyzing...sick of reliving it...sick of the screaming in my head that replayed over and over like a song stuck on repeat.

~ S.a. Healey

But what am I to do? I must have some drug, and reading isn't a strong enough drug now. By writing it all down (all? - no: one thought in a hundred) I believe I get a little outside it. That's how I'd defend it to H. But ten to one she'd see a hole in the defence.

~ C.s. Lewis

How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends.

~ Pierce Brown

We, the beggar class, have little to lose and our expectations are, at best, modest, and when we suffer, it seems we suffer to the depths, for there is nothing in our lives nor in our souls to buoy our hope. Nothing in the way of the blackness. It sinks to the bottom as the lead weight that is despair. We look forward such a short distance that our spirit is myopic, not to be corrected by any lens within our world.

~ Dan Groat

She was a music I no longer heard, that rang in my mind, itself and nothing else, lost to all sense, but not perished, not perished.

~ Marilynne Robinson

I know what it's like to lose kits, Oakheart, I wouldn't wish that kind of grief on any cat.

~ Erin Hunter

If you’ve ever lost someone that you love, and I say ‘love’ and not ‘loved’ because even when they’re gone, you still love them, you know that never goes away, but your life changes.

~ Rachel Spanswick

Usually it is through loss that things come to be of value.

~ Steven Redhead

In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.

~ Toni Morrison

Poor Ramon.

~ Robin Stevenson

You can't learn anything from losing someone you love. Any lesson you learn from that isn't a lesson. It's a compromise with life. A lie you tell yourself.

~ Sonali Dev

What is coping? This is what it is like: a cave underground deep in rock, hung across its roof with accretions of dripping salts. I am cavernous and hard as mineral. The cave holds a pool of dark water that has not seen light. The water is very cold; it is undrinkable and its size is unmapped. It is mine, but people cannot see it. Only Ev sometimes senses that it is there. All the time people say that I am coping very well. It is impossible to explain my strategy to them. It is opaque even to me.

~ Marion Coutts

Age isn't stealing from my grandmother, it's slowly unwinding her.

~ Shaun David Hutchinson

I’m passing the bar Where you first got in my car I’m not ashamed to admit That it’s you I won’t forget I saved your cigarettes andBad habits I regret But the hours flew by like cloudsWhenever I had you around Parachute loverTake me awayFrom the plane that went crashing And the earth that’s in flamesSaving you is saving me High above the redwood treesBut down below I see shadows And parachute debris We're drifting like children Along for the rideEach time we find love Another parachute arrivesOur madness will burn As bright as the sunAnd I’ll keep finding lovers But you were the one

~ Crystal Woods

The best part, though, was hearing my mother's voice. It was like having her again, coming out from far inside me. It hurt, of course, but more often than not the best things do, I've found. You wouldn't think it could be so, but-as the oldtimers used to say - the world's titled, and there's an end to it.

~ Stephen King

...grief is as much about regret for what you've never had as sadness for what you've lost.

~ David Nicholls

I have suffered through enough illnesses, trauma and heartbreak to finally understand that life will keep moving forward inexorably, if terribly at times. I am starting to realize that it can be delightful too, if I let it. My love is not diminished if I let go of sorrow. I almost believe that.

~ Jenny Qi

The shovel worked in and out of the light beams as the dirt hit him in the stomach, on his back, fell into his ears, his eyes, as I covered him along with the things that had made him: his walks, his rest, his eating when hungry, the stars he watched sometimes, the first day I brought him home, the first time he saw snow, and every second of his friendship, what he took with him into silence and stillness ...

~ Gerard Donovan

He hadn’t saved her. He hadn’t even bothered trying.

~ Tan Redding

The act of you leaving was just the full stop at the end of a terrible sentence. Fact is, I lost you long before you ever left.

~ Beau Taplin

I stood in your doorway this morningdreaming you’d turn aroundyou’d tilt your headyou’d softly whisper ”stay”or that you’d grab my armsto shake me while askingwhat the hell are we doingwe loveeach otherand this is not rightso we will make this worknow stay!You poured your coffee. Stirred the spoon like a crystal manwith your back to me and not a sound. the fridge humming elegies while the clock ticked onand the streets are so clean here people rushing to workand maybe I should be tooby nowat this agethis stagethis town.I will stand in that doorway dreamingfor many nights to come.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

My mom’s smile is genuine,A lilac beamingIn the presence of her Sun.Indentions in the sand proveTime’s linear progression,Her hair yet unblighted,Carrying midnight’s consistency.Clear tracks fading as theMovement slips furtherIn the past.CheekbonesHigh, soft,In summer’s hue,Hopeful.Each step’s unknown impact,A future looking back.My father’s strength:One whoseLife is in his arms.Squinting past the camera,He rests upon a rockLike caramel corn half eaten,Just to the leftOf man-made concrete conventionDaylight’s eraserRemoving color to his right.Dustin sitsIn my father’s lap,Open mouth of a droolingBig mouth bass;Muscle toneOf a well exercisedJelly fish,He looks at meHalf aware;His wheelchairPerched at the edgeOf parking lot gravel graftedLike a scar on nature’s beach,Opening to the ironic splendorOf a bitter tasting lake.I took the picture.Age 11.Capturing the pinnacle arcOf a sonTo my lilacWhoOutlived him and weeps,Still.Their sky has staple holes –Maybe that’s how theLightLeaked out.

~ Darcy Leech

The more we love the more we lose. The more we lose the more we learn. The more we learn the more we love. It comes full circle. Life is the school, love is the lesson. We cannot lose.

~ Kate Mcgahan

Whenever you get something in this world, you lose something too — that's just the way things work.

~ Banana Yoshimoto

I'm sometimes scared that I'm forgetting what my dad was like.

~ Ross Welford