“I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.”
Grieving feeling
Grieving Quotes — page 34 of 132
“It is not because other people are dead that our affection for them grows faint, it is because we ourselves are dying.”
“Just as a tree, though cut down, sprouts up again if its roots remain uncut and firm, even so, until the craving that lies dormant is rooted out, suffering springs up again and again.”
“But every day I tell my story, and be comfortable with my story and be comfortable with what I've done, and what I did, and how I am today, it lessens the likelihood it will ever happen.”
“Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.”
“To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”
“If you keep picking a scab it will bleed and never heal. If you keep dragging the pain of the past up, it will never heal.”
“... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.”
“But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.”
“The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.”
“But then I think about my sister and what a shell-less turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C'mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C'mon Len. And that makes me feel better, like it's her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.”
“The only way to deal with loss - as a horribly unwelcome guest that you know will show up eventually. And so you deny it and reject it and ignore it and laugh in its face. You toss it out into the street and push it away and fight it off, and only it has landed square in your lap, only then do you deal with it.”
“God gave me Parkinson's syndrome to show me I'm not 'The Greatest' - he is.”
“So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.”
“Love is the biggest eraser there is. Love erases even the deepest imprinting because love goes deeper then anything. If you childhood imprinting was very strong, and you keep saying: "It's their fault. I can't change," you stay stuck.”
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
“100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.”
“Because we managed to keep our heart open, despite the pain. Because we realized that the person who left us did not take the sun with them or leave darkness in their place.”
“In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself.”