34 Quotes by Sue Klebold

Artistic expression, even when it's unpleasant, can be a healthy way of coping with feelings.

There is perhaps no harder truth for a parent to bear, but it is one that no parent on earth knows better than I do, and it is this: love is not enough. My love for Dylan, though infinite, did not keep Dylan safe, nor did it save the 13 people killed at Columbine High School, or the many others injured and traumatized. I missed the subtle signs of psychological deterioration that, had I noticed, might have made a difference for Dylan and his victims - all the difference in the world.

Suicidal thought is a symptom of illness, of something else gone wrong. Most suicides are not impulsive, spur -of-the-moment decisions at all. Instead, most of these deaths are the result of a person losing a long and painful battle against their own impaired thinking. A suicidal person is someone who is unable to tolerate their suffering any longer. Even if she does not really want to die, she knows death will end that suffering once and for all.

A faraway look—I have heard suicidologist Thomas Joiner refer to it as “the thousand-yard stare”—is a warning sign for imminent suicide, and one often missed.

I would later learn that unexplained somatic symptoms, particularly abdominal pain, may be a marker for depression.

Asking 'why' only makes us feel hopeless. Asking 'how' points the way forward, and shows us what we must do

I didn't know until a year later that Marilyn Manson had canceled concert dates in our area out of respect, or that the NRA did not cancel their annual meeting, held at a hotel fifteen miles away from the school, just ten days after the shootings.

One card read simply, “ God Bless Your Family,” in the painstaking and shaky handwriting of a very elderly person, and I marveled at the enormous and possibly painful effort a stranger across the country had made—to get the card and the stamp, to write the note, to mail it—just so I would not feel so alone. These were people with an emotional bandwidth, a depth and breadth of understanding, that had come from pain in their own lives.

Indeed, I would not achieve the integration I sought until I found two nutrients essential to so many survivors. First, I found community and then I found a way to contribute.