44 Quotes by Gail Caldwell

The belief that life was hard and often its worst battles were fought in private, that it was possible to walk through fear and come out scorched but still breathing.

My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.

Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

You can’t change the tale so that you turned left one day instead of right, or didn’t make the mistake that might have saved your life a day later. We don’t get those choices. The story is what got you here, and embracing its truth is what makes the outcome bearable.

Grief is what tells you who you are alone.

Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

It’s and old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course.

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