c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
She had a sense of longing and loss that she had never had before. It was as if her family history had been erased and they'd been left unmemorable.She imagined that Rachel's family must have similar feelings, but she did not try to share these thoughts with Rachel.
— Denny Taylor, Rosie's Umbrella
You never really lose someone
—  they will always live in the corner of your mind.
I never know what to tell them. I mean, there's nothing you can say to make a person stop hurting. Half the time, I just feel like telling them the truth. I'd say that for 3 months, you're going to feel worse than you've ever felt and you cope as best you can. And that after 6 months, the pain isn't so bad, but it still hurts more than you think it will. And even after years, you still find yourself thinking about the person you lost and get sad about it. And you still miss them all the time.
— Nicholas Sparks, Three Weeks With My Brother
We all handle loss in our individual ways, grieve in all kinds of ways. We all go through feeling okay sometimes, but other times, we feel so bad we hurt ourselves or those around us.
— E. Journey, Welcome, Reluctant Stranger
Better my right hand should have been cut off. Go know I was setting in motion events that would lead to the ruin of one of the few truly good men I ever met.
— Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version
We may not be able to stop satan from doing his business, but we can scheme to make his business to yield a loss! All things... I mean "all", "all things", "everything" is working for our good!
— Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365
But undying memories stood like sentinels in her breast. When the notes of doves, calling to each other, fell on her ear, her eyes sought the sky, and she heard a voice saying, "Majella!
— Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona
The kindest and most meaningful thing anyone ever said to me is: Your mother would be proud of you. ... The strange and painful truth is that I'm a better person because I lost my mom young. When you say you excperienced my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I build in my obliterated place. I'd give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things. ... It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach.
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
The things you let go will someday teach you how to fly.
— Jenim Dibie
Loss, once it’s become a certainty, is like a rock you hold in your hand. It has weight and dimension and texture. It’s solid and can be assessed and dealt with. You can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away.
— William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace
When you left you left behind a fieldof silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds...you left a million butterfliesmid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you left leaving my coffee scentless and my couch comfortless leaving upon my fingers the melting snow of you you left behind a calendar full of empty days and seasons full of aimless wanders leaving me alone with an armful of sunsets your reflection behind in every puddle your whispersupon every curtain your fragranceinside every petal you left your echoes in between the silence of my eyes Oh and how you leftleaving my sands footless and my shores songless leaving me with windows full of moistened moonlight nights and nightsof only a half-warmed soul and when you left... you left behind a lifetime of moments untouched the light of a million starsunshed and when you left you somehowleft my poem...unfinished. (Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11Number 1 June 2012)
— Sanober  Khan
You're gone and you left me. My heart has dissipated. The only thing I can feel is the blood rushing through my veins and the strings that hold my fragile heart together.
— Karen Quan, Write like no one is reading 2
Where are you?" I wheeze into the floor. "Where did you go?
— Cynthia Hand, The Last Time We Say Goodbye
You always have something left to lose. Until, of course, you die.
— Ally Condie, Atlantia
Each memory was now the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. The only thing that remained tangible to him was the sense of absence.
— Haruki Murakami, Tony Takitani
Nobody sees it happening, but the architecture of our timeIs becoming the architecture of the next time. And the dazzleOf light upon the waters is as nothing beside the changesWrought therein, just as our waywardness meansNothing against the steady pull of things over the edge.Nobody can stop the flow, but nobody can start it either.Time slips by; our sorrows do not turn into poems,And what is invisible stays that way. Desire has fled,Leaving only a trace of perfume in its wake,And so many people we loved have gone,And no voice comes from outer space, from the foldsOf dust and carpets of wind to tell us that thisIs the way it was meant to happen, that if only we knewHow long the ruins would last we would never complain.
— Mark Strand
And that's that as you get older, you lose things, things you don't necessarily want to lose.
— Meg Cabot, Forever Princess
Turn off your phone, and your computer and your mind. Find your heart center and send it compassion. See the holiness in everyone you meet. Honor it.Know your worth. Know your worth. Know your worth.Accept no less. Become familiar with the space where compromise is unkind. Nurture your exquisite loneliness. Let it teach you. Light candles at every opportunity. Always wear perfume, it helps you remember yourself. Touch your inked ribs lightly when you forget who you are.
— Jeanette LeBlanc
She asked another question: "What does it matter if the rhinos die out? Is it really important that they are saved?"This would normally have riled me... but I had come to think of her as Dr. Spock from Star Trek - an emotionless, purely logical creature, at least with regards to her feelings for animals. Like Spock, though, I knew there were one or two things that stirred her, so I gave an honest reply."... to be honest, it doesn't matter. No economy will suffer, nobody will go hungry, no diseases will be spawned. Yet there will never be a way to place a value on what we have lost. Future children will see rhinos only in books and wonder how we let them go so easily. It would be like lighting a fire in the Louvre and watching the Mona Lisa burn. Most people would think 'What a pity' and leave it at that while only a few wept
— Peter Allison, Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
Repression. Her therapist, Dr. Solomon, loved the word. He'd say it slowly, letting it roll off his tongue. Sometimes he'd add a chin stroke for good measure. He always looked pleased when he did this, like he'd discovered the Caramilk secret or something.
— Jo Ann Yhard, The Fossil Hunter of Sydney Mines
When Mother and I learned that Father was dying, Father asked me to sing for him," she said. "Mother insisted that I only sing songs from their youthful days together. She wanted me to take her mind off Father's pain, But when she stepped away, Father asked me to sing songs about pain. About loss. About the world without him. When I played those songs, he would cry. It was the only way he could cry. And now it's the only way I know to cry.""We need you to lead us in crying, Lesyl, or we'll drown in unshed tears." [King Cal-Raven replied]
— Jeffrey Overstreet, Cyndere's Midnight
the loss is transformative, in good ways and bad, a tangle of change that cannot be threaded into the usual narrative spools...It's not an emergence from the cocoon, but a tree growing around an obstruction.
— Meghan O'Rourke
Jeeter?" Grace whispered into her walkie-talkie. "Are you awake?" She waited.A few weeks ago, she and Jeeter had started chatting on their walkie-talkies late at night when she couldn't sleep. He always answered her call no matter how late it was."I'm here," his voice echoed back. "Trouble sleeping again?""Yeah.""Another bad dream?""Uh-huh," she sniffed, unexpected tears flooding her eyes. My dad was calling for me, but I couldn't find him." She couldn't believe she'd said it. She'd never told anyone what she saw in her dreams. But Jeeter understood. He'd told her before that he had bad dreams too, since his mom had died.
— Jo Ann Yhard, The Fossil Hunter of Sydney Mines
It is not triumph which defines a man, but tragedy. Triumph always brings out the best in men, but tragedy shows us what we are made of.
— Jocelyn  Murray, The Roman General: A Novel
If everything else were still the same, he'd have felt Zee's absence like a gaping hole. But if he could continue to reconfigure his entire life, there would be no missing place where Zee had been.
— Rebecca Makkai, The Hundred-Year House
March 12Dear Stargirl,  Hey, you're a big girl now. Stop being such a baby. You think you're the only one who's ever lost a boyfriend? Boyfriends are a dime a dozen. You want to talk loss, look at all the loss around you. How about the man in the red and yellow plaid scarf? He lost Grace. BELOVED WIFE. I'll bet they were married over 50 years. You barely had 50 days with Leo. And you have the gall to be sad in the same world as that man. Betty Lou. She's lost the confidence to leave her house. Look at you. Have you ever stopped to appreciate the simple ability to open your front door and step outside? And Alvina the floor sweeper-she hates herself, and it seems she's got plenty of company. All she's losing is her childhood, her future, a worldful of people who will never be her friends. How would you like to trade places with her? Oh yes, lets not forget the footshuffling guy at the stone piles. Moss-green pom-pom. What did he say to you? "Are you looking for me?" It seems like he hasn't lost much, has he? Only...HIMSELF!  Now look at you, sniveling like a baby over some immature kid in Arizona who didn't know what a prize he had, who tried to remake you into somebody else, who turned his back to you and left you to the wolves, who hijacked your heart and didn't even ask you to the Ocotillo Ball. What don't you understand about the message? Hel-loooo? Anybody home in there? You have your whole life ahead of you, and all your doing is looking back. Grow up, girl. There are some things they don't teach you in homeschool. Your Birth Certificate Self, Susan Caraway
— Jerry Spinelli
You can’t lead people to where you’ve not been yourself. When you all get stranded, you need the knowledge of someone who knows the way!
— Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Watchwords
It seems there's nothing so good or pure it cant be taken without a moment's notice. And then in the end, it all gets taken anyway.
— Sara Gruen, At the Water's Edge
I should probably get a stone. A stone would be good. A stone would save me, would salvage all the damage we had already done, all the things we had given up or lost.
— Dave Eggers
When we lose someone we've allowed to be our whole life, we find that we have very little left to sustain us. Not only have we distanced ourselves from God, but we've lost something of ourselves in the process. When my husband passed away, I discovered that my relationship with God had been a shallow one at best, and that I had no reservoir of inner strength to draw from.
— Lawana Blackwell, The Widow of Larkspur Inn
Another year passed on . The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night :And Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep,and think in her half dreamy, half awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side ,as she used to do 'in the days of long-ago'; with shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child.
— Elizabeth Gaskell
You've left me with a kaleidoscope of broken smiles and shattered dreams.
— Karen Quan, Write like no one is reading 2
Suddenly she hated them all because they were different from her, because they carried their losses with an air that she could never attain, would never wish to attain. She hated them, these smiling, light-footed strangers, these proud fools who took pride in something they had lost, seeming to be proud that they had lost it.
— Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind
But the only thing worse than remembering the feel of Rose in his arms, the softness of her black and white feathers, the sound of her voice when she sang quietly to herself, would be forgetting it.
— Melissa Grey, The Girl at Midnight
Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us.
— Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life
I'll remember you... I remember everyone I've lost.
— Rebecca McNutt, Smog City
You said this was only the beginning, I didn't realize that meant starting a new chapter without you as part of my story.
— Tanzy Sayadi, Write like no one is reading 2
Keeping busy is the hardest part. When I find myself still, clear of thoughts, I can still feel you holding me.
— Karen Quan, Write like no one is reading 2
This is my home, Cape Breton is my home, and I don’t know if I really want to leave it as much as I might think and I’m sort of scared to leave it all behind, everything I’ve lived with, I have so many memories of all the things I’ve done here and I’m afraid if I leave, I might lose all my memories…
— Rebecca McNutt, Smog City
Maybe comfort exists in believing there is order in the world, even when someone is making the most disorderly decision we know: running toward death instead of away from it.In their absence, we're left trying to pin meaning to air.
— Kate Fagan
With even the slightest upset, detachment soon followed. I didn’t lose sleep over men, and I was too restless to be tied down. The grass didn’t even have time to grow around my feet before I was planning my next escape – whether it was to another state or out of someone’s life.
— M.B. Dallocchio
What is deeply felt is never lost.
— Marty Rubin
All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death is the key to the gate that bars memory.
— Diana Gabaldon, An Echo in the Bone
And as all of us know, it does not matter if the ending has been predetermined, or the demise inevitable, or otherwise on time, or even long overdue. For those who love or even simply fondly know a life; for those who have touched one existence with their own, helping to mould it as it does the same to them, goodbye will always and forever come much, much, much too soon.
— Emma Rose Kraus
He entered the city asked a blind man if he had ever heard the name Enkidu, and the old man shrugged and shook his head, then turned away, as if to say, ‘It is impossible to keep the names of friends whom we have lost
— Herbert Mason
God has hewn out a hidden path more glorious, tantalizing and adventuresome than the path trod by most, and it is a path seen only through the eyes of our wounds, felt solely through the heart of our losses, and singularly traversed by those with a limp in their step.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough
If we aren't willing to do whatever is required," he said finally, "then we risk losing what we have been mandated to protect.
— James Luceno, Star Wars - Tarkin
Jack had been the love of her life and he was gone. It seemed now that there had never been bad times, though she knew that wasn’t true. 
— Sara Sheridan, British Bulldog
What amazes me most is that we, as a people, have shared our collective story of being thrown out of our homeland, Palestine, with each other and with many others- actually we have bored the world with this collective story- but somehow the individual Palestinian shies away, or perhaps is too afraid, to share the very personal story of being thrown out of her or his home, living room, or bedroom. These personal stories are seldom told, not even to our own children, perhaps not even to ourselves. I guess the wound remains open.
— Suad Amiry, Golda Slept Here
There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds.
— Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere
She said that that was the disadvantage of bringing creatures into the house: one grew used to them, and then, one had the upset of their loss.
— Sarah Waters, Affinity
There’s a lamentation in the flutter of your lash.
— Laura A. Lord, Perjury
To lose someone after you’ve loved them was tougher than losing them when you’ve never even met them.
— Diyar Harraz, One Minute to Midnight
And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, is that if something happened to one of us--excuse me for saying this--but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love we're talking about, it would just be a memory. Maybe not even a memory.
— Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
Death is fugitive; even when you're watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your fingers. You don't get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit there, waiting for something to happen, and all at once you realize you've missed it.
— Jonathan Stroud, The Whispering Skull
Tomorrow camewith the illusion of todayeven more fleeting than yesterdayit camelike it always comesand wentlike it’s always gonelike a favorite song in its final secondsTomorrow came and leftleaving nothingnothing...but a familiarlingeringsense of loss behind.
— Sanober  Khan, A touch, a tear, a tempest
most of the timesit’s the hardest to saywhat I love moreyouor your memory.
— Sanober  Khan, A touch, a tear, a tempest
No one else was as close and as open, No one else so boiled my blood, Even he, who consigned me to torment, Even he, who caressed and forgot.
— Anna Akhmatova, White Flock
That's my fault, of course, because I behaved stupidly, like a child, because I didn't like feeling rejected. I need to learn to lose a little better.
— Paula Hawkins
I sit there on the floor with the picture in front of me and think about how things get broken all the time by accident, and how sometimes you just don't get round to getting them fixed.
— Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train
Even as I hold youI think of you as someone gonefar, far away. Your eyes the colorof pennies in a bowl of dark honeybringing sweet light to someone elseyour black hair slipping through my fingersis the flash of your head goingaround a corneryour smile, breaking before me,the flippant last turnof a revolving door,emptying you out, changed,away from me.Even as I hold youI am letting go.
— Alice Walker
I tell you of loss, my child, so you will listen, slowly, and know that in life every emotion is fated to rear itself within your being. Don't judge it proper or ugly. It's simply there and yours. When you should happen to cry, then cry, knowing that just as easily you will laugh again and cry again. Your feelings will enter the currents of your core and there they shall remain
— Thanhha Lai
Our absence is what remains of us.
— Catherine O'Flynn, The News Where You Are
When I wear her clothes, I just feel safer, like she's whispering in my ear.
— Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere
My head and shoulders melted first, followed by my hips and knees. Before long I was a puddle, soaking into the pretty cotton prints. I drenched the quilt she never finished, rusted the metal parts of her sewing machine. I was pure liquid loss...
— E. Lockhart, We Were Liars
Enjoy your life, the time you have now, because time cannot be found only lost.
— Marty Rubin
When you don't have something anymore, you learn to live without it." That's what my dad told me that first night after he found me sleeping inside a closet underneath a pile of my mom's clothes. All the different smells of her were still there and the memories were alive even if she wasn't. I looked up into his face and wondered why would I ever want to learn to live without her? That felt like she really would be gone forever, and I wanted to limp on the broken piece of me so I could feel her there all the time.
— Alan Silberberg
im in love with you and im not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
I'm in self-imposed exile, cradled between split branches, in my favorite tree in the woods behind school. I've been coming here every day at lunch, hiding out until the bell rings, whittling words into the branches with my pen, allowing my heart to break in private.
— Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere
Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all we can imagine. If it is consistent with hurting us, then He may hurt us after death as unendurably as before it.
— C.S. Lewis
I don't really enjoy experiencing pain. No one does. But we will become less human if we learn to detach ourselves from one another to the point that when we experience death of a beautiful being (our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our soul mates, our friends etc.) that it will not bother us that we will not feel. But see that's suppression. It will bother us somewhere deep inside. So, love someone. Hold them tight. Don't fear the loss. Fear the part of being too afraid to love someone. Love Everyone. It's inevitable: we all die. Thats the ugly part of life. But Love and being alive is so beautiful and so strong that the love, the memories stay even in death. Life is love, life is being alive to feel pain. The love the beautiful love always remains. Love. Life. Joy. Peace
— Jill Telford
Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn't just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged
— Louise Penny
Imagine going a long time without seeing someone you love. Then after months or years getting the moment to see them and catch up. I think that's what death is like. Going a long time and missing them a lot, more and more each day. No matter how many years go by you miss them just as much as the first day they left. I miss my mom. Its been years. Its easier to manage but I miss her more and more. But I often think of the moment we will meet again and catch up again. In living life going a long time not seeing someone is tough then catching up right where you left off BUT imagine in death how powerful the feeling to see them again must be. Death is getting the chance to catch up and see them again. Experiencing the butterflies and that special high that is felt all over your body. Do not fear death. Embrace it as you do life. In life, love hard! Life moves fast. For when your time comes you have a chance to love hard again and catch up with those that left, those you've missed and those that missed you. Someone is there counting the days to seeing you again. Some you may not expect or some you've missed just as much. Don't fear what you think you're leaving behind. Don't fear at all. For what you leave is temporary, the living will too join you as you wait for them. And, that moment to catch up is worth the wait. You will pick up right where you left off as if time did not pass.
— Jill Telford
If Luce had to rank the worst moments of his existence, Abaddon's betrayal would be up there with the day he was cast into the pit by his own brother.Neither came close to the sting of losing Serah, though.
— J.M. Darhower, Reignite
The value you get does not depend on what you have, but how much of it you bring to the market place. You don’t get paid when you keep your gifts at home and go to the market empty handed!
— Israelmore Ayivor, Daily Drive 365
The Luna-Ganymede Race went down in history, and the magnetic sail went down to the fusion thruster. Terranova should never have taken the bet, but it was a matter of pride - and prive loves loss above surrender.
— Michael Flynn, The Wreck of The River of Stars
Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.
— Euripides
I never thought that freedom would feel so much like grief.
— Rosamund Hodge, Gilded Ashes
Chuang-tzu once told a story about two persons who both lost a sheep. One person got very depressed and lost himself in drinking, sex, and gambling to try to forget this misfortune. The other person decided that this would be an excellent chance for him to study the classics and quietly observe the subtleties of nature. Both men experience the same misfortune, but one man lost himself because he was too attached to the experience of loss, while the other found himself because he was able to let go of gain and loss.
— Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
The lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness
—  despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.
He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
But thou art with us, with us in the past,The present, with us in the times to come.There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,No languor, no dejection, no dismay,No absence scarcely can there be, for thoseWho love as we do. Speed thee well!
— William Wordsworth
...the nostalgia for things that weren't yet lost.
— Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling
The less I have, the less I can lose.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
In trying to escape the fatality of memory, he discovered with an immense sadness that pursuing the past inevitably only leads to greater loss. To hold a gesture, a smell, a smile was to cast it as one fixed thing, a plaster death mask, which as soon as it was touched crumbled in his figures back into dust.
— Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
There was a man whose only son died of a sudden illness. He did not mourn for his son, nor was he sad about it. His friends were curious about his behavior, so they asked him, "Your only son is dead. You should be heartbroken. Why do you act as if nothing had happened?"The man replied, "Before my son came, I had no son. I was certainly not heartbroken back then. Now I have no son. Why should I be heartbroken now?
— Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
Mourning is essential to uncoupling, as it is to any significant leavetaking. Uncoupling is a transition into a different lifestyle, a change of life course which, whether we recognize and admit it in the early phases or not, is going to be made without the other person. We commit ourselves to relationships expecting them to last, however. In leaving behind a significant person who shares a portion of our life, we experience a loss.
— Diane Vaughan, Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships
Oh, the need to lay my tongue in the rivers of wine,To taste of her lustHow a star feels as it bursts infinitely into diamondsThe earth cries, but it is only the heavens that weep for herThe sun needs to rise once moreCast its loving arms across the mountains and her valleysAnd pull her from the shadowsTo bathe her in the warmth the heart only knows as love
— - Morris R. Gates
To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be, it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
— William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost
It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that seemed to contain everything. The songs of the birds and the creak of the trees. The dying snow and the unseen gurgling water. The glimmering sun. The certain sky. The gun that didn't have a bullet in its chamber. And the mother. Always the mother. The one who would never come to me.
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Lucy gripped her chilled glass of orange and raspberry juice. When Rebecca talked about Austen, she’d mostly mentioned Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley. She hadn’t really thought of the doe-eyed, pale-skinned heroines. 	On the screen, Anne Elliot walked down a long hallway, glancing just once at covered paintings, her mouth a grim line. Lucy thought Jane Austen would start the story with the romance, or the loss of it, but instead the tale seemed to begin with Anne’s home, and having to make difficult decisions. Maybe this writer from over two hundred years ago knew how everything important met at the intersection of family, home, love, and loss. This was something Lucy understood with every fiber of her being.
— Mary Jane Hathaway, Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread
Lucy rubbed her back, a feeling of panic tightening her chest. She was the last person to give love advice. She hadn’t done anything but pine for Jem since he’d gone, and done nothing but pine for him since he’d returned. She hadn’t taken her love for him and put it anywhere at all.	Alda looked up, eyes red. “I need to take that love and spread it around. What a waste to just keep it tucked inside.
— Mary Jane Hathaway, Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread
Ah, a romantic.” Danny leaned back, threading his fingers behind his head. “I used to be one, until my wife died. And then I was just pathetic.
— Mary Jane Hathaway, Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread
I have a RAGING SEA inside of me, trying to break free from ALL of me.
— Joanna Brandow
A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bare to lose.
— Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
How does the moon feel as it sees the ocean lap at your shores? The eternal pain of knowing you are there but forever out of reach...
— - Morris R. Gates
Sometimes you have to risk life, in order to live, and gamble death, to sacrifice life.
— Anthony Liccione
Decades would pass. A few short sections would be formed in time into strangely resurrected, trunkless legs-tourist sites, sacred sites, national sites.For the line was broken, as all lines finally are; it was on longing for meaning and hope, but the annals of the past are a muddy story of chaos only. And of that colossal ruin, boundless and buried, the lone and level jungle stretched far away. Of imperial dreams and dead men, all that remained was long grass.
— Richard Flanagan
You’re innocent until proven guilty,” Mandy exclaimed, unable to hide her gleeful smile. She missed the way people used to have normal conversations, used to be more caring for each other than themselves, back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, she realized, neighbors kept to themselves, their kids kept to themselves, nobody talked to each other anymore. They went to work, went shopping and shut themselves up at home in front of glowing computer screens and cellphones… but maybe the nostalgic, better times in her life would stay buried, maybe the world would never be what it was. In the 21st century music was bad, movies were bad, society was failing and there were very few intelligent people left who missed the way things used to be… maybe though, Mandy could change things. Thinking back to the old home movies in her basement, she recalled what Alecto had told her. “We wanted more than anything else in the world to be normal, but we failed.” The 1960’s and 1970’s were very strange times, but Mandy missed it all, she missed the days when Super-8 was the popular film type, when music had lyrics that made you think, when movies had powerful meanings instead of bad comedy and when people would just walk to a friend’s house for the afternoon instead of texting in bed all day. She missed soda fountains and department stores and non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags, she wished cellphones, bad pop music and LED lights didn’t exist… she hated how everything had a diagnosis or pill now, how people who didn’t fit in with modern, lazy society were just prescribed medications without a second thought… she hated how old, reliable cars were replaced with cheap hybrid vehicles… she hated how everything could be done online, so that people could just ignore each other… the world was becoming much more convenient, but at the same time, less human, and her teenage life was considered nostalgic history now.Hanging her head low, avoiding the slightly confused stare of the cab driver through the rear view mirror, she started crying uncontrollably, her tears soaking the collar of her coat as the sun blared through the windows in a warm light.
— Rebecca McNutt, Smog City
love canembellish its beginningsing its blossomingand engrave its eternitiesbut can never explain its loss.
— Sanober  Khan
They Served...reliving memoriesthat will not diegiving their allfor you and I -friends takenlives shaken...
— Muse, Enigmatic Evolution
With Pollution, emotion is irrelevant, it is not their nature,” Mearth sighed, making a face as if she were talking to an ignorant small child. “I didn’t create them, humans created the Pollution. Cheryl Nobel, Alecto Steele, Albert Sanders, Olivia Campbell, all my pretty little Representations, there aren’t many of them left these days but they’re still very dangerous! They’re here to tell society all about its mistakes! You don’t understand the world of Representations.
— Rebecca McNutt, Smog City
Then I think of Charlie and our first New Year’s apart, and how I miss him. I miss him so much, but it’s confusing, because I missed him long before he was dead, and that’s the bitch of it all. I missed him long before he was dead.
— A.S. King, Please Ignore Vera Dietz
If you were me you’d do the right thing, help your friends, because you’re not a coward,” Mandy sighed sadly. “I covered up a murder because I was scared to go to jail and I did the wrong thing… well, now’s my chance to do the right thing, to save someone’s life, because I don’t want you to die.”“Save someone’s life? I’m no one,” Alecto laughed morbidly. “A hundred and twelve years is definitely way too long to have survived. You’d be wasting your time and risking your own life….”“This is my life,” Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other water in the world.
— Rebecca McNutt, Smog City
I was always on guard and I was always prepared for him to be upset with me. I had lived feeling uneasy and tense for so long.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
Being married definitely took work. When we fought, I felt like I wanted to float away and drown, whereas before I knew I could walk away without any strings attached.
— Brenda Perlin
First of all, he was not my type. He was nice, considerate, unselfish and grounded; qualities I’d never experienced in a man. Usually, I went for the self centered, screwed up, “I’m lost, will you be my mother” type.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I had no intention of forsaking my wedding vows. I had strong morals and never could have imagined going against them. I was never even tempted to stray.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I didn’t want to get burned. I didn't want to be the other woman, but I wanted him with all my might.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I didn’t feel like I was stealing someone’s husband
—  I felt like they were already apart.
He wanted revenge and I knew he would not stop until he got it. I had to hope he would run out of fuel.
— Brenda Perlin
Not long after my mom died, my dad pretty much kicked me out of the house. He never said, “Get out of my house,” but instead, I came home one night to find all my clothes scattered all over our front lawn.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I had just turned thirty. That was enough in itself to be depressed about. I never thought I would be this age and feel this worthless. I was supposed to be “somebody.” I guess you could say I was slightly disappointed at the outcome.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
At times, it felt so odd being with a man in such an intimate way who was not my husband.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
This very easy divorce had become very difficult. I thought I was in the express lane and it was all fast tracks from there. Think again.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I had to get used to it because my life was no longer safe and I was no longer protected like I once was.
— Brenda Perlin
Living with myself wasn’t all that easy. I was not the young girl I once was. Once upon a time when I looked in the mirror, I saw this happy glow. Now nothing glowed except the leftover face cream from the night before.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I was physically attacked by a woman who didn’t even know me. Yes, my boyfriend was her former husband, but she tried to ruin me.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
I could only defend myself so much. It was my word against his. There was no evidence, nor was there any proof. My word meant very little.
— Brenda Perlin
He would say things like, “But you are my wife!” when I didn’t do something that he wanted me to do. His expectations were not realistic.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
Somehow, we both got carried away. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but before long, I knew nothing was ever going to be the same.
— Brenda Perlin, Shattered Reality
Even though their marriage had been dead for over two years (her words, not mine), this put her in the role of the innocent. She was now a woman scorned. ~Shattered Reality
— Brenda Perlin
I don’t know if this happens in all relationships, but I just got so sick of his all too familiar stories. I had heard these stories so many times that I could have recited them myself.
— Brenda Perlin
Here are the things I want for you -I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope to never fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And if I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. - I want you to know that most of all.
— Lang Leav, Lullabies
He's right. I can't deny it. I am the reason Day lost everything that matters to him.
— Marie Lu, Prodigy
Why’d you want to kill yourself? Didn’t you feel anything, or didn’t it hurt you?” Mandy questioned, looking puzzled. “Yes, I suppose it did, … it was strange, it was sharp, that’s all I can think of to describe it… and cold, but not cold like ice, more like… I don’t know, like something much worse, something horrible… and it seemed like the ground was falling upwards, becoming the sky… for a moment it made me consider that it was just a dream, that I was on some sort of drug, and then I remember being overjoyed to see the sky was still above me, then just really sad, really tired… and then I don’t remember much else about it,” Alecto told her, glaring straight ahead at the sky with narrowed eyes. “I don’t mind, I’m not supposed to mind, anyway. Mearth already told me that eventually I would want to be dead, that it was inevitable… still, I sometimes wish that I could have done something good for other people in my life, it might have made up for all the bad stuff I’ve done.
— Rebecca McNutt, Smog City
The way he said it spoke of an ache I recognized. I knew that no matter how similar they were, no two losses were the same, but despite his loss being from a different circumstance, I felt his sadness as my own. We sat there in silence with my hand resting in his. My bandage told its own stories while we remembered the girl who taught Randolf such a valuable lesson about the small turning into the large.
— J.D. Brewer, Vagabond
Shocking loss isn't to be shared, no matter how hard you try.
— Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.
— Chris Matakas, #Human: Learning To Live In Modern Times
The world was not to be trusted. Loved persons were always stolen. Dreams always squashed. That was life as she understood it.
— David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein
If you think about someone you've loved and lost, you are already with them. The rest is just details.
— Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time
Time does have a way of softening most things. Anger, hate, and even loss are often diluted by the passage of time. And memories, well they become more precious as days go by . . . until one day the cup that seemed half-empty, incredibly, becomes half-full.
— Cynthia Mock Burroughs
Help me,” I sobbed. “I beg you, help me.” My eyes burned, butno tears came. I had lost the basic human ability to weep. Human…Iam no longer human. “Destroy me. Take pity and send me on my way.
— Carol Oates, Something Wicked
Loss taught me the strength of faith. Faith in a God who understands. Faith in a Saviour who gave His all. Faith in a Comforter who walked by my side.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Excursions in my Mind
Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost— or might lose— defined him more than the things he yet possessed.
— David Anthony Durham, Acacia: The War with the Mein
Dry fingers of decaying branches protruded upward, above what was left of the canopy of green. They rattled like skeletal bones, grasping for a final breath from the last silvery clouds of evening that slowly drifted by.
— K. Farrell St. Germain, Then'diel's Song
Loss taught me the value of tears. Just as the rains come down to wash away debris and dust, tears unleashed can bring relief.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Excursions in my Mind
Loss taught me the priceless value of friends. I would have lost it but for my friends.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Excursions in my Mind
She had conquered, but she had also necessarily lost much. Perhaps what she had lost was not worth keeping; but at any rate she had lost it.
— William Dean Howells
Loss taught me. It taught me that I won’t have people around me forever. The good I need to do to someone today, I may not have the opportunity to do tomorrow.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Excursions in my Mind
Loss taught me. Loss taught me that death comes to both the old and the young.
— Nana Awere Damoah, Excursions in my Mind
However much grief I carried, I liked the way my life was tending, these bright new directions. It's only human, to mourn and to reach toward forwardness at once.
— Mark Doty, Dog Years
Her strategy for honoring the dead had always been to take action - solve the mystery, punish the criminal. But what did you do when there was no one to punish? When there were no answers to find? How do you assimilate that kind of loss without losing your mind?
— Rob Thomas
Although you can not hear my thoughts, Sam, I imagine I’m talking to you. Prayers to the brother who abandoned me. The day after you left Labrador, my honey started flowing. Is my body weeping for your loss?
— Barry  Webster, The Lava in My Bones
Go. Go to your beautiful dances, your beautiful ceremonies. And we will bury our dead.
— Lily King, Euphoria
People are going to say a lot of things. And some of it will be helpful, and some of it will be annoying, and lots of it will get on your nerves. But they're saying it because they found it helpful when they lost someone. They mean well.
— Michelle Falkoff, Playlist for the Dead
I knew this for a fact. Little by little, the ache to see him, to hear him would disappear. Little by little I’d forget how his arms felt, how his fingers felt, how his lips felt..the sound of his voice, the intensity of his gaze, all of it. Trace by trace it would slip from my mind, recede into foggy memory. The painful haze that dulled my present would melt into the past. Maybe not all the way, maybe there would be a few scars. Maybe I'd be different, but I’d be me again. Little by little.
— Jennifer DeLucy
You can't undo loss. You can't unmake a mistake. (What The Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth?)
— Gayle Forman, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories
And then she realized that after that Christmas party, she didn't really lose anything, except respect for everyone.
— Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading
That loss is common would not makeMy own less bitter, rather more:Too common! Never morning woreTo evening, but some heart did break.
— Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam
There are all sorts of losses people suffer- from the small to the large. You can lose your car keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.
— Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller
Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams.
— Eudora Welty
It is the death of hope that comes as the greatest relief
— Jojo Moyes, The Girl You Left Behind
There's no choice that doesn't mean a loss.
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
loss takes as much as love does, sometimes more
— David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility
This skin cripples me. It always has. — Kai Cheng Thom to -----, 2013 (age 22)
— Jeanette Lynes, Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets
Fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already loss.
— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
The greatest loss is the loss of life.
— Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!
We don't know what it's like not to be in love with you. We loved you the moment you looked at us, held our hand, danced dirty, kissed us. We were lost in you way before we even met, before the thought crossed your mind that you were bored and we were vaguely good-looking, interesting, exotic, fuckable. While you were weighing options, we were just hoping it wouldn't hurt too much — the fucking, or the falling in love, or the rejection. We didn’t get to choose. — Kai Cheng Thom to -----, 2013 (age 22)
— Jeanette Lynes, Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets
Don’t make loss in your life make you a loser.
— Sarah Noffke, Revived
Heartbreak , death and loss were shared between us, but renewal, commitment and strength as well.
— Laura  Ward, Past Heaven