77 Quotes by Jane Hamilton

There is nothing like lying down to bawl and choke, and then rolling over so the tears can drip out of your ears and settling in for a long sleep.

I didn't know how to tell him that I hadn't lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn't feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.

...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.

The law of thermodynamics, you know, the idea that nothing is lost, that a loss in one area equals a gain in the other, was actually not invented by scientists but by the people who write redemptive fiction. [...] Actually, in real life, we lose things all the time and they're gone. Lost, period.

Life, he knew, had meaning and was fully possessed only as it was remembered and reshaped.

She could never be part of so much of his turbulent history, his youthful adventure, where life had been deeply felt.

Emma, Emma, Emma," I said, wishing I could somehow teach her to take the smaller blows of life in her stride.

Sometimes I couldn't figure it out, what all the living was for.

There were moments, I could now see, when it was understandable to completely go off your rocker. The easiest and most reasonable and maybe proper thing to do in the world, to lose hold of yourself.