44 Quotes by Gail Caldwell

Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

The struggle was hard-won, especially when the worst demons in the room were mine.

We need imperfection in our relationships, else we would die from the thickness of intimacy.

I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

In the dream I knew she was dead, and I reached out for her and said, "But you're coming back, right?" She smiled but shook her head; her face was a well of sadness.

It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.

Give me back what should already be mine. Give me the dark, the freedom of the streets, the right to walk wherever I want, unafraid of rape or assault or just being messed with. The stars belong to me as much as you. Move over. Make room on the bench.

All of us had been trained to take less than her share at the table, and some of us even hated and feared each other because that's what pressure from above teaches and forces and underclass to do.