For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.
“Something I learned very quickly was that grieving was complicated by lack of certainty, that the hope inherent in a missing loved one was also a species of curse. People posted about children who had gone missing upwards of fifteen years ago and whose faces were now impossible to conjure, about friends who had messaged to confirm a meeting place and then simply never showed up. In almost every case, the sense of loss was convoluted by an ache of possibility, by the almost-but-not-quite-negligible hope of reprieve. Deus ex machina – the missing loved one thrown back down to earth. Grief is selfish: we cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person – but more than that, we cry because it helps. The grief process is also the coping process and if the grief is frozen by ambiguity, by the constant possibility of reversal, then so is the ability to cope.”
― Our Wives Under the Sea
― Our Wives Under the Sea
“I can't move to pull on my clothes except that somehow I do, and I can't stand on two feet except that somehow I do, and I can't walk, there's no way I can walk, except I do. I take step after step after step after step.”
― Migrations
― Migrations
“But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.”
― The Handmaid's Tale
― The Handmaid's Tale
“Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t.”
― A Man Called Ove
― A Man Called Ove
“What did I care about my hammer, about my bolt, about thirst or death? There was, on one star, on one planet, on mine, the Earth, a little prince to be consoled! I took him in my arms. I rocked him. I told him, 'The flower you love is not in danger...I'll draw you a muzzle for your sheep...I'll draw you a fence for your flower...I' I didn't know what to say. How clumsy I felt! I didn't know how to reach him, where to find him...It's so mysterious, the land of tears.”
― The Little Prince
― The Little Prince
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