#Grief

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."

"It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."

"See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it"

"There are all kinds of ways for a relationship to be tested, even broken, some, irrevocably; it’s the endings we’re unprepared for."

"Of course the cat will growl and spit at the operator and bite him if she can. But the real question is whether he is a vet or a vivisector."

"The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?"

"Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air."

"Set your compass to beauty, humor, and grief; stay the course no matter what, and I'll support you with everything I've got."

"Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life."

"Here’s what I know: death abducts the dying, but grief steals from those left behind."

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love."

"Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply."

"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."

"The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before."

"But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief."

"Just when normal life felt almost possible - when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thing would go awry and the veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed. They learned, somehow, to wait those times out. There was no cure, no answer, no reparation."

"This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back."

"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house."

"CLEMENTINE: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.JOEL: I know.CLEMENTINE: What do we do?JOEL: Enjoy it."

"So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love."