#grief

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#lauren-oliver #color

I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn't made my life wonderful, its made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify "book" by peeling open my hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. ↗

— Jonathan Safran Foer

#love #sadness #change

My mother's last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love. ↗

— Cheryl Strayed

#beauty

No hour is ever eternity, but it has its right to weep. ↗

— Zora Neale Hurston

#grief

My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel. ↗

— Alice Hoffman

#grief

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it. ↗

— Rachel Field

#artists #grief #joy #life #life-and-living

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you. ↗

— Veronica Roth

#guilt #guilt

They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#healing #magnus-bane #time #will-herondale #grief

It doesn't get better," I said. "The pain. The wounds scab over and you don't always feel like a knife is slashing through you. But when you least expect it, the pain flashes to remind you you'll never be the same. ↗

— Katie McGarry

#grief #pain #grief

The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude. ↗

— Thornton Wilder

#gratitude #grief