3,968 Quotes About Grief

Walking alone in the dark early the next morning, New Year's Day, the coming year stretched out like a bleak and endless highway, leading nowhere.... Having held on for months, thinking that that if only we can get through to the new year, now I felt plunged into black ice, in danger of drowning.... Suddenly I understood our friends' concern. Could this be what precedes some kind of breakdown--a sudden shift to feel oblivion as temptation, even as seduction?

Maybe it wasn’t the smart thing, but when you lose someone like that? They’re just gone? There’s this hole inside you you’d give anything to fill. You don’t think, you don’t plan, you just pour shit into it, anything that will fill it.

I don't say goodbye very easily, Anna. Not gracefully or prettily.Goodbye tears your heart out and leaves it a feast for carrion birds who happen by.

Fifty-one years old and still only slowly coming to some understanding of my life, I sat on a beach on the Costa Brava, digesting the terrifying knowledge that we hold in our hands each other's fragile hearts, and can treat them as gently or roughly as we please.

I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it.

I hear the word in the hallover and over again.Suicide.Suicide.Suicide.Did he or didn’t he?Everyone’s got a guess.Still no one knows for sure, except Gabe, but he’s not talking. Why does it even matter? He’s gone. His, ours, theirs— blame needs a place. His, ours, theirs— pain all over the place. His, ours, theirs— forgiveness missing from this place.

What if it's as simple as one moment? One tiny thing, like that kiss on the rocks? What if I'd kissed him a little longer? Would he be alive right now? Or what if I'd stayed with him Friday night, what if I'd been with him… wherever he was?

June is gone. For the first time, the enormity of that hits me. Every muscle aches, my heart most of all. I am throbbing with how much I miss her. It hurts worse than anything. I don't know how I'm supposed to be expected to live day to day carrying this kind of pain. I don't know how I'm supposed to go out there, spread her ashes, and let her go.I want to stop running away from everything.I want to find something to run toward.

...do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone?