#Loss

"If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?"

"Relationships are like water. If you grab tight, clamping and clenching to gain control, you’ll lose it all. Instead, cup your hand gently, so she feels free to drink until her thirst is quenched."

"You see how I tryTo reach with wordsWhat matters mostAnd how I fail."

"The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn't eased, but there was room there for humour, too."

"Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss."

"That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that."

"Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war."

"...what happens when you returnand find nothingbut a hollowed shell,shingles and floor,walls and echoesand the light that lead you herehas now burned outand the ones who built ithave traveled afarand you cant go to them,no matter what shoes you wear."

"What's the difference?"You ask meThe difference is, a smile touches my lipsWhen I remember both the memory of you entering my lifeAnd the memory of you leaving my life"

"True regret is knowing you missed your only opportunity to be simply a good friend to someone that was exactly like you."

"Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both."

"God never said that we wouldn’t have unfair situations, that we wouldn’t experience loss. But He promised if we would stay in faith, He would restore everything that was stolen."

"I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room"

"Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love."

"Sometimes it takes great suffering to pierce the soul and open it up to greatness"

"It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away."

"Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one."

"Though sorrow may impede my heart,It is of great love to have known you."

"Here the whole world (stars, water, air,And field, and forest, as they wereReflected in a single mind)Like cast off clothes was left behindIn ashes, yet with hopes that she,Re-born from holy poverty,In lenten lands, hereafter mayResume them on her Easter Day."(Epitaph for Joy Davidman)"

"Remembering. Forgetting. I'm not sure which is worse."