Loss Quotes

I sit quietly and think about my mom. It's funny how memory erodes, If all I had to work from were my childhood memories, my knowledge of my mother would be faded and soft, with a few sharp memories standing out.

~ Audrey Niffenegger

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room

~ Audrey Niffenegger

Nos-tal-gic,’ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for ‘nostalgic.’ ‘Nos-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.’‘Really, old fellow?’‘Important. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.’He fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.‘Akira,’ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. ‘We should move on. We have much to do.

~ Kazuo Ishiguro

she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

~ Charles Bukowski

We cannot experience free joy and happiness without experiencing the depths of pain.

~ Natalie Brenner

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find...

~ Christina Baker Kline

Life is a useless passion, an exciting journey of a mammal in survival mode. Each day is a miracle, a blessing unexplored and the more you immerse yourself in light, the less you will feel the darkness. There is more to life than nothingness. And cynicism. And nihilism. And selfishness. And glorious isolation. Be selfish with yourself, but live your life through your immortal acts, acts that engrain your legacy onto humanity. Transcend your fears and follow yourself into the void instead of letting yourself get eaten up by entropy and decay. Freedom is being yourself without permission. Be soft and leave a lasting impression on everybody you meet

~ Mohadesa Najumi

Your fear of becoming a cliche is what turns you into one. If you remove the fear, we are all really walking contradictions, hypocrites and paradoxical cliches

~ Mohadesa Najumi

You are not always right. It’s not always about being right. The best thing you can offer others is understanding. Being an active listener is about more than just listening, it is about reciprocating and being receptive to somebody else. Everybody has woes. Nobody is safe from pain. However, we all suffer in different ways. So learn to adapt to each person, know your audience and reserve yourself for people who have earned the depths of you

~ Mohadesa Najumi

All my life I have heard the term happiness thrown around like a buzzword as if it is something to be gained. As I have previously expressed, I do not view happiness as a tangible thing. To me happinesss is the elimination of accumulated darkness. Self-sustaining happiness comes from contentment of acceptance, compassion and sympathetic joy, qualities which cannot be developed like a muscle, but rather they must be actualized by the removal of fetters in the mind

~ Mohadesa Najumi

I take it as a compliment when somebody calls me crazy. I would be offended if I was one of the sheeple, one of the sleepwalkers in the matrix or part of the collective hallucination we call 'normal

~ Mohadesa Najumi

Her question was clear-“Father, where does the Loss reside?”In the sighs?Cheeks with tears wiped?A lost appetite?Owning a room confined?Or in the smiles all falsified?Thus, the Father decide,It is no matter to hide, he replied-“I think its deep inside,Probably,In the layers of your soul,Where the body provides it,Ample food to be-Magnified, multiplied, intensified.But once you clarify,That its not to be occupied inside,It starves of supplies,And dies.So child, when there is loss,Make sure you refuse to invite it inward, And absolutely never make it your lifelong parasite.

~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Here’s what I know: death abducts the dying, but grief steals from those left behind.

~ Katherine Owen

Your memory feels like home to me.So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you.

~ Ranata Suzuki

I liked holding David’s hand, though. That part-the snow dampening my face, letting my tears mix without anyone seeing, his fingers snug in mine-that was nice. His hand was heavier than I would have guessed. More solid. Like he could keep me from flying away.

~ Julie Buxbaum

You look beautiful even when you cry. I mean, not that you don’t look beautiful when you’re happy. Of course, you’re beautiful all the time. But out there in the snow, you were stunning.

~ Julie Buxbaum

I try to think of other things. David’s hand in mine. That was nice. Innocent, friendly hand-holding. I think of his tape measure. And his haircut. I think about what it might be like to kiss him. Not that I really think of him that way-like a boyfriend or even just some hookup-but still I imagine kissing him would feel good. A true thing. A real thing. I imagine he tastes like honesty.

~ Julie Buxbaum

we match,” I say, and as soon as the words are out I already know that tomorrow will come and I will remember this moment and wince. We match?? And so, even through this drunken haze, I feel relief when he doesn’t laugh at me. Instead he squeezes me a little tighter, brings me a tiny bit closer so my edges are against his edges, and it’s all warm. Our bodies fit. I secretly sniff him, and get rewarded with his fresh lemony scent

~ Julie Buxbaum

I am kissing David Drucker. I am kissing David Drucker. I am kissing David Drucker. I Was wrong. I had assumed this would be his first kiss, that it would be fumbling and a bit messy but still fun. No way. Can’t be. This guy knows exactly what he’s doing. How to cradle the back of my head with his hands. How to move in soft and slow, and then pick up the pace, and then slow down again. How to brush my cheeks with even smaller kisses, how to work his way down my jaw, and to soften the worry spot in the center of my brow. How to pause and look into my eyes, really look, so tenderly I feel it all the way down in my stomach. He even traces the small zigzag scar on my eyebrow with his fingertips, like it’s something beautiful. I could kiss him forever. I’m going to kiss him forever.

~ Julie Buxbaum

We don’t talk on the ride home. We don’t have to. I feel warm and giddy and like I have a secret that I want to keep all to myself. David Drucker, who is so many different people all at once: the guy who always sits alone, the guy who talked quantum physics even in my dad’s dental chair, the guy who held my hand in the snow. I kissed David Drucker, the guy I most like to talk to, and it was perfect.

~ Julie Buxbaum

FAVORITE GIRL IN THE WORLD. STILL MY FRIEND? Please meet me on the bleachers after school. Please. And I’m sorry. Sorrier than any person has ever been sorry in the history of sorry people. I’ll put in one last please for good luck. Sorry. Again.

~ Julie Buxbaum

Will you think about the kissing?” he asks, and I laugh again and mimic his shrug. If only he knew how much I think about the kissing. “Will you reconsider hand-holding?” he asks, instead of answering, I move my arm so it’s next to his, so we are lined up, seam to seam. He reaches out his pinky finger and links it around mine and a warm, delicious chill makes its way up my arm. We stay that way for a minute, in a pinky swear, which feels like the smallest of promises. And then I grab his whole hand and link his fingers in mine. A slightly bigger promise. Or maybe a demand: Please be part of my tribe. It’s pretty simple, really. For once, things are not complicated. Right now, right here, it’s just us, together, like this. Palm to palm. The most honest of gestures. One of the ways through. Maybe the best one.

~ Julie Buxbaum

If a soul could drown in its own tears, then hers was already dead.

~ R. W. Patterson

Saving YouThe darkness takes him over, the sickness pulls him in; his eyes—a blown out candle, I wish to go with him.Sometimes I see a flicker— a light that shone from them; I hold him to me tightly, before he's gone again.

~ Lang Leav

A loss of any kind is horrible. Not because it takes away, but because it makes you believe- in newspapers, in tomatoes, in empty whiskey bottles.

~ Anosh Irani

Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

~ Gail Caldwell

Then, in spite of everything, he began to smile. So much of his existence in Everlost had been full of despair. Despair, and a fear of losing what he had. But Allie was not lost, she was just there across the river, waiting for him to find her. Nick was not lost either--not entirely.It was then that Mikey McGill realized something. It must have been his sister who first called this place Everlost, because by naming it so, it stripped away all hope except for a faith in her, and the safety she could provide. Well, Mary was wrong on all counts, because nothing in Everlost was lost forever, if one had the courage to search for it.Mikey held tightly on to this shining truth as he and the golem sunk into the earth. Then with all the force of his heart, his mind, and his soul, Mikey McGill began to dig.

~ Neal Shusterman

A lesson for all of us is that for every loss, there is victory, for every sadness, there is joy, and when you think you’ve lost everything, there is hope.

~ Geraldine Solon

You were standing in the wake of devastation And you were waiting on the edge of the unknown And with the cataclysm raining down Insides crying Save me now You were there, impossibly alone

~ Linkin Park

Stop counting your losses and start counting your blessings. Only then will you discover that losses are always easier to point out and count than blessings. And that your blessings will always outnumber your losses, for they are truly immeasurable.

~ Suzy Kassem

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,And field, and forest, as they wereReflected in a single mind)Like cast off clothes was left behindIn ashes, yet with hopes that she,Re-born from holy poverty,In lenten lands, hereafter mayResume them on her Easter Day.(Epitaph for Joy Davidman)

~ C.s. Lewis

The only true borders lie between day and night, between life and death, between hope and loss.

~ Erin Hunter

I know now, just quite howMy life and love might still go onIn your heart, in your mindI'll stay with you for all of time.

~ The Calling

But that's just it; I can either focus on what I have lost, or what I have gained, and I choose the latter.

~ Angie Smith

Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed. Like Schrödinger’s cat inside a box you can never ever open.

~ David Mitchell

The days passed in a dream. I pictured our reunion again and again, played it out in my mind over and over until I’d almost worn a groove in my thoughts, so deep that it seemed the only thing I could think of was our reunion. Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair.

~ Steven L. Peck

She felt the depth of her losses before they were realized, and she wondered, Is there still hope? Did she even dare hold on to such a tenuous thing as hope?

~ Sage Steadman

I count everything loss, to gain anything under the power of grace in Jesus Christ.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Do not dwell on your loss. Look forward with bright new hopes.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Later, you told me what your mother had said. How your father, the farmer, rose up slowly. You told me how your mother wailed on the other end of the phone, grieving her loss and complaining about the basketball of a goitre perched on her shoulder. She told you, your father walked onto the veranda and saw a chook floating ten feet above the ground. The chook didn’t flap a feather and just sat there brooding, swaying in the breeze.

~ Jon Gresham