I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be normal. Then came the dim awareness of something off, out of place. Then the truth came crashing down and that was it for the rest of the day. Sunlight was reproof. Shouldn't I feel better than I had in the dead of night.

~ Francine Prose

Francine Prose Death Grief Loss Sad Sadness Sorrow

Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.

~ Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes Death Grief Loss Mourning Suffering

Not only had my brother disappeared, but--and bear with me here--a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.

~ John Corey Whaley

John Corey Whaley Brothers Death Death Of A Loved One Family Grief Loss Siblings Sisters

No - no - no! someone was shouting. No! Fred! No!And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.

~ J.k. Rowling

J.k. Rowling Crying Death Depressing Fred Harry Potter J K Rowling Loss Sad So Many Feels Why

It's a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life.

~ George W. Bush

George W. Bush Death Dumb Loss Sorrow

I was diamond on the outside, and I would not break.Inside, though, I was already broken.

~ Shaun David Hutchinson

Shaun David Hutchinson Bullying Death Lgbtq Life Loss Love Space Stars Teen Ya

No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling.

~ Pat Cunningham Devoto

Pat Cunningham Devoto Childhood Death Loss Missing Mother Sadness

When he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, My father died, my father died. My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of?

~ Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai Death Fathers Identity Loss

When along the pavement,Palpitating flames of life,People flicker around me,I forget my bereavement,The gap in the great constellation,The place where a star used to be

~ D.h. Lawrence

D.h. Lawrence Bereavment Death Loss My Sisters Keeper Star Submergence

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

~ John Banville

John Banville Acceptance Death Grief Immortality Life Goes On Loss Memory Mourning Sorrow

You can't just make me different and then leave

~ John Green

John Green Alaska Death Driving Drunk Dying Loss Lost Love

Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.

~ Mary Karr

Mary Karr Death Grief Loss

...what happens when you returnand find nothingbut a hollowed shell,shingles and floor,walls and echoesand the light that lead you herehas now burned outand the ones who built ithave traveled afarand you cant go to them,no matter what shoes you wear.

~ Kellie Elmore

Kellie Elmore Death Dorothy Grief Grieving Heart Heartache Heartbreak Home Loss Love Memories

...all of our laments could not add a single second to her life, not one additional beat of the heart, nor a breath.

~ Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey Niffenegger Death Loss

His absence is so big it's like he's there.

~ Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness Death Dog Grief Loss Love Miss Missing Sad Sadness Sorrow

There was a roaring in my ears and I lost track of what they were saying. I believe it was the physical manifestation of unbearable grief.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver Death Grief Loss Love

No popularity exists when tragedy strikes. All that's left are human hearts and love and ache. We all love each other, deep down, and when we see another soul in pain we can't help but hurt too.

~ Maya Van Wagenen

Maya Van Wagenen Death Loss Love Popular Popularity Tragedy

I lost my father this past year, and the word feels right because I keep looking for him. As if he were misplaced. As if he could just turn up, like a sock or a set of keys.

~ Mark Slouka

Mark Slouka Death Fathers Grief Loss Sons

What had happened still seemed implausible. A person was present your entire life, and then one day she disappeared and never came back. It resisted belief.

~ Meghan O'rourke

Meghan O'rourke Belief Death Loss

And thus we all are nighingThe truth we fear to know:Death will end our cryingFor friends that come and go.

~ Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson Crying Death Friends Grief Loss Poetry

Tonight I want to stand on the side of a cliff and look down, dare the wind to gust and knock me off. Everyone thinks that falling to your death is the worst thing that can happen. But that’s a lie. The worst thing is to be alive for no reason.

~ Tammara Webber

Tammara Webber Death Life Loss Love Teen

WHEN SOMEBODY GOES AWAY THERE'S THINGS YOU WANT TO TELL THEM. WHEN SOMEBODY DIES MAYBE THAT'S THE WORST THING. YOU WANT TO TELL THEM THINGS THAT HAPPEN AFTER.

~ Louise Fitzhugh

Louise Fitzhugh Death Loss

He would find his Susie,inside his young son. Give that love to the living.

~ Alice Sebold

Alice Sebold Child Death Inspirational Loss Love

If I could find one wordthat would shudder the airlike that frightened sob,that wordless prayerof my newly-born,who drew one breath,and with unopened eyessank back into death;If I could break the world's cold heartwith that cry,then this grief would liftand I could die.

~ Kenneth L. Patton

Kenneth L. Patton Death Grief Loss Poetry

A flower bloomed already wilting. Beginning its life with an early ending.

~ R.j. Gonzales

R.j. Gonzales Birth Complications Death Loss Loss Of A Baby Miscarriage Sad Sadness Tragedy

Of all the miracles Po had seen in the time and space of its death, Po thought this--the absorption of another, the carrying of it--was the most bewildering and remarkable of all. Whenever Bundle separated again, Po was left with an ache of sadness that reminded the ghost of the body it had left behind.

~ Lauren Oliver

Lauren Oliver Ache Afterlife Death Ghost Grief Loss Merging Sadness Separation

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history.

~ Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge Ancestors Death Ghosts Grief Healing The Past Loss Memories Psychoanalysis Relationships

That is, Jack thought, the way of life. The horror changes us, because we can never forget. Cursed with memory. It starts when we're old enough to know what death is and realize that sooner or later we'll lose everyone we love. We're never the same. But somehow we're all right. We go on.

~ Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz Death Loss Memory

That cake tasted good. But the cake in the garbage tasted better. It was the best cake I ever ate.

~ Loretta Ellsworth

Loretta Ellsworth Cake Death Life Loss Relationships Transplant

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.

~ C.s. Lewis

C.s. Lewis Babyloss Death Faith Grief Grieving Loss Stillbirth

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.

~ C.s. Lewis

C.s. Lewis Babyloss Death Grief Grieving Loss Miscarriage Perinatal Death Sids Stillbirth

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.

~ Meghan O'rourke

Meghan O'rourke Death Grief Loss Orpheus

I don't say goodbye very easily, Anna. Not gracefully or prettily.Goodbye tears your heart out and leaves it a feast for carrion birds who happen by.

~ Patricia Briggs

Patricia Briggs Dead Heat Death Grief Loss

Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.

~ Vicki Harrison

Vicki Harrison Death Grief Loss Love Strength Survival

You may say suicide is a loss of control and cowardly. Foolish as it may sound, I am prepared to argue.

~ Dee Remy

Dee Remy Argue Cowardly Death Foolish Life Loss Love Strength Suicide

June is gone. For the first time, the enormity of that hits me. Every muscle aches, my heart most of all. I am throbbing with how much I miss her. It hurts worse than anything. I don't know how I'm supposed to be expected to live day to day carrying this kind of pain. I don't know how I'm supposed to go out there, spread her ashes, and let her go.I want to stop running away from everything.I want to find something to run toward.

~ Hannah Harrington

Hannah Harrington Death Grief Loss

I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I'm right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children. There will be no survivors. The shock I've been feeling begins to give way to fury. I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a cease-fire, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do. My hands go out automatically, as if to indicate the whole horror around me. This is what they do and we must fight back!President Snow says he's sending a message. Well I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that? One of the cameras follows where I point to the planes burning on the roof of a warehouse across from us. Fire is catching! I am shouting now, determined he will not miss a word of it, And if we burn, you burn with us!

~ Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins Burning Death Fire Katniss Loss Speach War

I could kill you a thousand times over Abraham, but we would never be even. You took everything I had.

~ Christopher Buecheler

Christopher Buecheler Death Hate Loss Love Murder Regret Vampires

Losing Chloe had been like reading a wonderfulook only to realize that all the pages past a certain point were blank.

~ Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult Death Loss

She was made mostly of coffee and empty spaces.

~ Adelise M. Cullens

Adelise M. Cullens Coffee Death Death And Dying Empty Grief Loss
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